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Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

• pfdietz 1y ago
  As batteries and PV panels get cheaper, we'll see demand destruction from this sort of thing. It's going to be a bleeding wound on the grid.
• lm28469 1y ago
  I'm in Germany and keep seeing these, I always wonder what a 400w poorly oriented panel getting like 3 hours of sun a day is good for. If they weren't basically free thanks to tax reduction and other tricks I assume no one would get them
  • eliaspro 1y ago
    The tax-credit (there are no other "tricks") just shortens the pay-off time of 3-5 years by 19%, that's all!
  • ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Ensuring no one buys expensive thermal power when the grid is flooded with zero marginal costs renewables and near zero marginal cost storage.
    • lucb1e 1y ago
      Rephrasing that to be more understandable because I didn't get this as it was: "Making sure no one buys expensive electricity from coal or gas plants when the grid is full of cheap renewable energy and almost-free stored energy." I'm frankly still not sure what you're trying to say even if I understand the sentence now, e.g.: what free storage?! Isn't germany's projected storage capacity by 2050 somewhere between negligible and tiny?
      • ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        Storage isn’t free. But when you have it the marginal cost of an extra cycle is very low. Germany’s battery storage-related grid connection requests swell beyond 500 GW https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage-related-grid-connection-requests-swell-beyond-500-gw/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage...
        • lucb1e 1y ago
          That's like saying the cost of taking an additional bite from your food is very low once you have already bought it, if I'm understanding the continued use of marginal correctly in context?
          • ViewTrick1002 1y ago
            Assuming you have an endless supply of food but can only take one bite per day and it means tomorrows bite will be a bit smaller. These storage systems are generally warrantied as 5000-10000 cycles with 85% capacity remaining in 20 years time. Guaranteed money today is better than saving a few cycles to maybe make money in 20 years time. Now also factor in discounting the risk etc. and the calculation is given. But the business case is of course calculated on having the entire construction cost be amortized with profit over a chosen period. With some days making more money than other. What batteries do are extending the time renewables flood the grid with cheap electricity and thus force nuclear reactors to throttle down, gas peakers to shut down etc. Or these thermal plants can bid negative ensuring they don’t have to turn off while hurrying on their own demise.
            • lucb1e 1y ago
              Okay, I can follow that. I've noticed on electricitymaps.com that, for Germany, the coal component never disappears, no matter if you have optimal wind+solar conditions near the summer solstice and prices are far into the negatives. Apparently it's cheaper to let it run the power plant at negative prices for days, than to make it stop burning coal for those days. That renewables with storage would make that finally go away stands to reason But that fully relies on storage. The person you were responding to was asking whether small-scale solar panels make sense. As it is, during those hours where your solar panel is most effective, you can sign up to receive money for drawing electricity from the grid (if prices are negative enough that it outbids even the transportation costs and taxes). Having a solar panel at that time... you might as well turn it off and get a price that's better than free. Storage would be what we need much more urgently than an extra 800Wp solar per household, then we could already turn off those coal plants for probably weeks at a time during summer
  • monero-xmr 1y ago
    Maybe these can pull 700 watts on a sunny day? And you’d need a battery to store it. Would likely make 50 cents a day or less in electricity, on perfect days. The cost for a battery, panels, and install would be ~1000 euro (or more if it’s a bureaucratic mess).
    • geor9e 1y ago
      They don't use a battery; they just supplement your apartment so you use less grid.
      • brucehoult 1y ago
        I use a battery -- 6kWh, 3600W inverter, with 6x 440W panels -- and don't feed power into the house wiring, but simply power the appliances in the same room as the equipment: Starlink, Mac Mini with 32" monitor, 16" i9-13900HX laptop, half a dozen small SBCs (5-15W each), fridge, espresso machine, air fryer, microwave, toaster, kettle, 4kW (output, 900W electricity) portable air conditioner, dehumidifier (250W). some LED lighting. At the moment (spring) in half-decent weather all the above stuff is 100% off-grid. I'm still using grid power for hot water heating, dish washer, clothes washer -- all of which I do for free in my daily "Free Hour of Power" -- and for intermittent incidentals such as the water pump (e.g. runs for 15 seconds when I flush the toilet) and lighting in usually non-occupied rooms such as toilet, bathroom, and bedroom -- which together means I'm paying around 10c-20c per day over and above the fixed daily charge.
    • Kim_Bruning 1y ago
      I just did some modelling with the help of claude (which can write 200LOC+ numpy code faster than I can) 300 Euros crappy setup, 600 euros mid-range setup, 1200 with storage. (Extra) regulations is zilch, it's legal to plug and play these things up to 800W nameplate capacity. I went with numbers for mid-range, vertical south orientation and offsetting 200W (without battery, any overproduction is wasted). This nets you an avarage of €0.32 per day - With practically nothing in winter, and maybe up to €1 per day on a PARTICULARLY nice summer day. But altogether, that still adds up to something like Eur 116 per year, so your midrange system earns itself back in 5-6 years. Not great, not terrible. Nothing to write home about, but free money is free money.
  • lucb1e 1y ago
    Article cites manufacturers as saying that > installing a couple of 300-watt panels will give savings of up to 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill, but there are lots of variables that come with that claim. It depends on which direction the balcony faces and whether the panels are shaded part of the day. My german electricity bill is around 1200 euros a year. Sign me up for a one-time purchase of 426€ to save ~360€ every year if I had optimal conditions -- call it 50% effective and it's still earned back in under 3 years. The thing lasts, what, a decade? More? (Price taken from https://kleineskraftwerk.de/products/kleines-kraftwerk-gitterbalkon-single https://kleineskraftwerk.de/products/kleines-kraftwerk-gitte... for 450W, first one I could find from some review site.) Edit: figure corrected for not using the tax rebate that it apparently advertised with
    • blackjack_ 1y ago
      Yeah so depends on your cost per kWh, and usage time versus production time. My 800W of balcony panels can theoretically produce 3-4 kWh per day (they peak at about 550w of actual production), but they generally produce a lot less than that. This is because my usage during production time is both less than that and also very spiky (my power usage is often 0w or 100-200w base load, with 2kw spikes as the compressor in the refrigerator kicks on, or some other device kicks on). So the savings for me isn't 3 years payoff, it's probably more like 6. But yes, these panels will product for 25-30 years. So yeah, they can pay for themselves very quickly depending on your usage patterns. I'm in the US, and over here we also have some other complicating factors (here we have 2 sets of breakers that are 180 degrees out of phase and so the solar panels can only feed into one half of the breakers without extra complications. I only sort of understand this, someone else can explain better), so solar panels plugged into the balcony that don't backfeed straight to the grid can only cover a subset of the usage. In Germany you have 240v power so I would assume you would hit payoff very quickly.
    • lucb1e 1y ago
      (I'm too late and can't edit anymore, but I just noticed upon re-rereading that it says "couple of 300W panels" in the quote and not just "a 300W panel". My math (though done with a 450W panel for an example sales price) is likely off in the wrong direction. Sorry about that.)
  • colechristensen 1y ago
    Solar is cheap, non-peak-efficiency installs get to be the priority once you get the first 40% or so of production in solar. This kind of thing just knocks the edges off of production and transmission costs. You get to the point where you're not trying to squeeze peak efficiency any more and you're just trying to fill in spaces wherever works reasonably well.
  • danielheath 1y ago
    "Poorly oriented panel" can equally well be described as "generates most of its power in the evening, when you have gotten home from work and want to use electricity". It's better to get power at a useful time, even if that means the panel only generates half as much as it could, because storage costs far more than panels.
  • dzhiurgis 1y ago
    It's 800 watts or about 570 KWh per year in berlin, assuming balcony points directly south. At 0.2 euro, that's about 114 euros per year. Percent-wise I'd guess it's less than 10% of yearly total? Overall it's OK payback, but mostly penny pinching in grand scheme of things. https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=48.886392,9.470215,6&s=52.522906,13.425293&m=site&pv=small,180,90,0.8 https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=48.886392,9.470215,6&s=5...
  • valenterry 1y ago
    A 400W half decently oriented panel (i.e. south facing balcony, 60 degree angle) is sufficient to run your AC to cool your 50sqrm apartment during summer for free.
    • brucehoult 1y ago
      In the summer the optimal angle where I live (35.5º S) is 12º. Panels lying flat on the lawn are losing only 2% from that. Just now, near the equinox, panels lying flat on the lawn lose around 18% at noon. I'll find a way to prop them up at 50º for winter when the time comes for that (April or May), though that's for sunny conditions. In our typical overcast in winter flat on the ground is probably still fine to catch the most diffuse light. I'll experiment when the time comes.
      • valenterry 1y ago
        Right. I mentioned the suboptimal 60 degrees because many people hang it from the balcony (90 degrees) and the tilt it a bit, but usually not too much. From what I've seen 60 degrees seems like a good average number.
        • brucehoult 1y ago
          Yeah, in northern Germany vertical and 60º are pretty much equally good/bad in winter (75º would be ideal), but 60º will be getting 70% more power in summer than vertical, and is near ideal in spring/autumn.
  • kragen 1y ago
    That's mostly true, but you're mistaken about the reason they're basically free: it's because the costs of manufacturing them have been dropping dramatically for 20 years, thanks to (in large part Chinese) manufacturing innovations, not because of things like tax reduction.
  • jansan 1y ago
    [flagged]
• monkeydust 1y ago
  Very solarpunk
• tomhow 1y ago
  Redirected from https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/21/germany-embraces-balkonkraftwerke-balcony-solar-for-apartments/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/21/germany-embraces-balkon..., which points to this. (And a reminder that the guidelines ask "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter".)
• duxup 1y ago
  I wonder how useful those are just small panels hanging off the side of a balcony oriented poorly. They also kinda look terrible :(
  • astro1138 1y ago
    When it comes to urban design, I consider balcony solar panels to be less of a nuisance than cars on the streets.
    • a96 1y ago
      Much better than a lot of "architecture", too.
  • Tepix 1y ago
    The 450W panels are quite large these days (2m²). I don't mind their looks.
• WaitWaitWha 1y ago
  Great idea! Want to learn more on the safety though... > Once in place, people simply plug a micro-inverter into an available wall outlet. later >Gründinger and experts at the German Solar Industry Association noted that the devices don’t generate enough power to strain the grid, and their standardized design and safety features allow them to integrate into balconies smoothly and easily. This seem to talk to the safety of the grid and the balcony. What is done when electricians power down the apartment or worse, the building to work on something? The wires remain energized despite proper distribution panel shut down. Do these setups have auto shut off if they see no other power on the plug they are on? what if it is the building, wouldn't other panels still energize the wires, so they would not shut down? Just asking, as my personal experience is quite hair raising and crispy when it comes to inappropriately de-energized circuits. ;)
  • GaggiX 1y ago
    These microinverters do not output anything if they do not detect the grid.
  • lazide 1y ago
    Micro inverters pretty much all have automatic shutdowns in these situations. They can ‘boost’ the phase/voltage, but won’t replace it if it is missing.
  • geor9e 1y ago
    Anti‑islanding detects the power frequency and constantly tries to shift it. If the grid is on, its frequency won't budge, so the anti‑islanding doesn't trip. If the grid is off, the frequency shifts and it shuts off. A second one would just make it shut off faster.
    • sowbug 1y ago
      Curious: is anti-islanding an actual feature, or a necessary behavior of any power source that adds power to the grid? I can't imagine how a second power source would work at all if it weren't syncing to the main source's AC phase. So it seems that if you implement the syncing, you get anti-islanding for free (assuming you handle the case of a missing main source phase by not providing power at all). This is a newbie question, and I look forward to learning how it's more complex than this.
• drnick1 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • dathinab 1y ago
    there is nothing lol about it, if you commonly connect anything larger without additional precautions to it you end up in an endless number of safety hazards and guess what if you do take extra steps you also can have larger solar systems sure non of this steps are practical for rented out apartments, but quite viable for owned apartments and houses
    • duskwuff 1y ago
      I'm not sure what kind of laptop you're using, but most laptops I'm aware of use considerably less than 800W. :)
      • dathinab 1y ago
        oh yes I missed the point, I mean 60W chargers are common for a laptop. 800W is enough to run 2x console gaming setup (~200W console + <200W for Monitor+misc. which is normally more then enough). Even for PC gaming where GPU power draw has gotten unhinged 800W you can get you a 5060 setup (~600W) + monitor working, or something like a framework desktop based gaming system (~400W) + monitor.
    • gpm 1y ago
      I think they might be laughing at 800 watts to charge a laptop or small fridge. Most laptop chargers are a fraction of that. Full sized fridges might use slightly more power than that to spin up the compressor, but their steady state energy usage is generally less than that, and their average energy usage (including the time when the compressor is entirely off) is like a 20th of that.
  • znyboy 1y ago
    That quote also stuck out to me. It'd be more accurate to say a dozen laptops.
• melasadra 1y ago
  Some people laugh at the 800W output. However, in Indonesia, roughly half of the 300 million people live in homes with an electricity capacity of 900W or less. Wish these kind of panels were available at that price here. We have pretty much 12 hours of sunlight every single day but household solar panel is discouraged by the state owned utilities.
  • lucb1e 1y ago
    What do you mean by 'that price'? Are there heavy import tariffs or another artificial reason why you can't order from the same chinese manufacturers as germany does? I would have thought that the issue is purchasing power inequality between germany and indonesia, not that they're not available globally at a similar price
    • PieTime 1y ago
      Some countries with state gas or utility monopoly will ensure legislation blocks solar power. Example Thailand has huge solar potential but cheap gas, so they block solar panel installations Yes, there is inequality as can be seen in Pakistan. But once restrictions are dropped the solar panels take off.
      • lucb1e 1y ago
        Surely you can do what you want within your own home, so long as you don't hook it up to the grid? I'm also not sure if this fits with the price restriction they mentioned. Prohibitions can't be bypassed by paying a higher price, unless it were to refer to bribes
        • gpm 1y ago
          The systems in the article are hooked up to the grid though. They're hooked up in an extremely safe and responsible manner, but it's understandable that there are regulations about what can be hooked up, and simply not surprising that they haven't been updated to say "yeah, this is ok".
• gyudin 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • lucb1e 1y ago
    Feel free to elaborate on the connection between cargo cult and solar panels if there's some point you want to make with this
• rmoriz 1y ago
  Besides the physical and ecological aspects, this is very libertarian. Something that is sadly not very appreciated in Germany. People take responsibilities, consider low power devices and optimize running times of dishwashers etc. to maximize ROI. Many new home automation (HA) users do exactly this. It's a reason to discover a new field of skills, like setting up home labs to increase digital sovereignty (partially) for example with HA and Nextcloud. Advanced users will go further and become familiar with Proxmox VE and even a container setup. Plenty of off-lease PCs are currently flooding the market (Thanks, Windows 11 requirements) making them awesome Linux/Proxmox hosts.
  • mft_ 1y ago
    > Besides the physical and ecological aspects, this is very libertarian. Something that is sadly not very appreciated in Germany. Genuinely interested what you mean by this - could you expand, please? (It seems like the success of this scheme would mean that there is a meaningful group of people who are willing to take such an approach in Germany, whether it is characterised as libertarian or otherwise?)
• bickfordb 1y ago
  I was pricing out using bifacial panels for fencing. It seems like it would cost about twice the price of cedar, but last twice as long (50 years) and have less upkeep.
  • rcdemski 1y ago
    I started looking at that to boost my roof solar capacity. It looks like it’s permitted by code where I’m at and now the only thing I’m unsure about is vandalism since my property is against a busy street. Seems like a great idea though.
• paulmist 1y ago
  Meanwhile China projected to add ~300GW of solar capacity in 2025. Germany renewables capacity for 2023 was 165GW. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas-solar-power-capacity-growth-slow-h2-after-pricing-reforms-2025-08-13/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas...
  • echoangle 1y ago
    China is also 30 times larger in area than germany.
    • paulmist 1y ago
      It is! Their biggest solar farms are also in the Inner Mongolia where the irradiance is twice what you get in Germany. That said the sheer scale is crazy!
      • slaw 1y ago
        Inner Mongolia is so far from populated areas that China build 2000 km electric power lines, as long as a car drive from Munich to Sicily.
        • kragen 1y ago
          The Messina Strait Bridge doesn't actually exist. Perhaps you are driving a hovercraft.
          • slaw 1y ago
            Ferries don't exist.
            • kragen 1y ago
              I imagined them.
          • SapporoChris 1y ago
• renewiltord 1y ago
  This is cool. One annoying thing with much of San Francisco is that renting means you can't put things on the outside of the building usually (not a law just common lease language) but I have a little solar panel that I use to charge a phone that I can leave outside. This is wonderful. Power from the sun and no consumables!
  • chihuahua 1y ago
    A typical phone battery has a capacity of about 13.5 Wh. Assuming a converter efficiency of 90%, it takes 15 Wh (0.0015 kWh) to charge your phone from an outlet. Assuming an electricity cost of $0.39 per kWh in San Francisco, that's 0.58 cents ($0.0058) every time you charge your phone using the solar panel. By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.
    • renewiltord 1y ago
      haha it's not the savings. It's the accessibility! This phone is out on a balcony by a herb garden. The big annoyance with electric devices is that they need to be connected to an outlet. PVs have saved this. We have our blinds on PVs which is very convenient. No charging required and no wires required. Same thing applies here. The PVs allow battery recharge for places where power cables are inconvenient. The phone is a convenient tailscale device with a battery that can webcam!
• syntaxing 1y ago
  AP News had a great article about this. We really need more states to adopt this beyond Utah. https://apnews.com/article/balcony-plug-solar-climate-energy-renewable-trump-c162abf520da0fa155dc971270b8684a https://apnews.com/article/balcony-plug-solar-climate-energy...
  • dmix 1y ago
    > The $2,000 plug-in solar system installed on Dwyer’s backyard deck in March consists of two 400 watt panels, an inverter, a smart meter and a circuit breaker. It saves him around $35 per month on his power bill because he is consuming less energy from the grid, but he said reducing his carbon footprint was his primary motivation. so about 5yrs ROI And in germany a similar 5yr ratio (With some german cities subsidizing installation): > Weyland spent around $530 for his 600-watt-capacity system. While he’s happy with how his south-facing panels perform during balmy weather, such days are rare in northern Germany. He estimates that he’ll save around $100 in annual electricity costs and recoup his investment in about five years. The article mentions the main motivation in Germany is also climate change and a feeling of independence, not so much economics
    • driverdan 1y ago
      That's way overpriced. An 800W solar system is easily under US$1000 now.
      • kragen 1y ago
        In the US? Where do you buy it from, and are we talking about a system that feeds power back onto the grid?
        • stronglikedan 1y ago
          Not an answer to your question, but I was amazed at how wildly varied the pricing was when I was getting estimates. This was a few years back and I didn't go with it at the time, so I forget what the exact estimates were. But I remember that the highest was literally double the price of the lowest for all the same equipment. All I'm saying is don't trust any pricing you get from folks online, and do get a lot of estimates.
• tecleandor 1y ago
  > German regulations limit balcony solar systems to 800 watts, enough to power a small fridge or charge a laptop. That gotta be a big laptop!
  • BonoboIO 1y ago
    Better be safe for future AI GPUs
    • a96 1y ago
      800 W. In a laptop. The heat output of a hot air gun or two.
  • brucehoult 1y ago
    Yeah, crazy. I've got 6x 440W panels literally lying flat on the lawn. They produce at least enough (200W) to power all my computers, my Starlink, my fridge, and some LED lighting by about 2 hours after sunrise and until 2 hours before sunset, even if it is completely overcast and/or raining. When there isn't a cloud in the way they produce 2000W-2400W from 11 AM to 3 PM, usually enough (at this time of year, spring conditions) to fill my 6kWh battery by noon if I don't need to use it for heating (4kW output portable air conditioner, using 900W) in the morning, leaving the electricity free for cooling in the afternoon. Otherwise the battery fills in the afternoon. If I don't need heating at night then the battery powers everything from before sunset to after sunrise with typically 2-3 kWh left in the morning to make coffee and breakfast (I use about 1kWh in the kitchen per day) and run some heating until solar generation (and the direct sun heating) pick up. The solar panels (JAM54D40-440/GB if anyone is interested) cost me the equivalent of US$390 plus tax for all six. The Pecron E3600LFP I use to control them (combined 3kWh battery, 2x 1200W MPPT controllers, 3600W inverter, AC charger) cost ~US$1500, and an extra 3kWh battery US$800. And $200 for 2x 30m 6mm^2 cables. That's it. I just did this last month. Results so far indicate the panels will pay for themselves by March. I bought the battery unit primarily as a UPS because of the terrible electricity reliability where I'm living, and a $450 petrol generator to charge it in the event of the multi-day outages I get in big storms (most recently 40 hours in April). It was looking like having about an eight year payback period just via time-shifting night rate power to peak times, but adding the solar panels looks like reducing that to about three years. I'm at 35.5º S.
• wileydragonfly 1y ago
  Just 5.5 more million to go! And then another 65 million.
  • ceejayoz 1y ago
    We’ve been seeing that exact sort of exponential rate from Chinese solar installations.
• plantain 1y ago
  This is such a total failure of state capacity. Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale, and then bring it to people's homes via the existing infrastructure at a price that makes this kind of micro-scale setup completely uneconomical? It's bad enough when we have to put solar panels on actual roofs to reduce electricity bills. This is just absurd. Where are the economies of scale? Why are individuals having to take responsibility for their own energy generation? Are we doing our own sewer and water supplies next?
  • Kim_Bruning 1y ago
    Oh wow, that's an interesting position. I'm really curious to hear where you live and/or from what background you say this? Btw, this article is about putting a solar panel not on your roof, but on your balcony. People do it because it's cheap and saves money on electricity. Think of it like growing herbs on your balcony. Sure, industrial farms have economies of scale, but you still save money growing your own basil (and it's fresh!). Same principle. Slightly higher yield.
    • plantain 1y ago
      You grow herbs at home because it's kitsch, fun, or even convenient, not to save money. Store harvested herbs die in the fridge, electricity does not. In Australia, our government massively subsidizes putting solar panels on our roof, and batteries in our garages, for a $/kWh price wildly higher than could be achieved with economies of scale in an industrial installation. Batteries are even more egregious than solar, why install batteries .one. .at. .a. .time. behind switchboxes where they can only be used individually rather than a suburban installation that allows them to be used in aggregate? I can only imagine how badly the numbers stack up somewhere suboptimal for solar like a German balcony. What if everyone instead gave their 1000 euros to a state organization that built a big solar farm that everyone shared? Oh wait - that's exactly how the state is meant to work!
      • Kim_Bruning 1y ago
        The subsidy question is interesting, but in Germany these balcony panels are ~ €600 unsubsidized (depending on the exact kit; see my numbers elsewhere in this discussion) and still pay back in 5 years. The economics work with and/or without government help.
• deleted 1y ago
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• mikeinseattle 1y ago
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• nebula8804 1y ago
  Has anyone done any studies on the co2 emission of manufacturing one panel like this? Curious how long it will take to offset.
  • ponco 1y ago
    A simple Google tells me (as I was curious) it's between 6 months to 20 years, with the average being 2 years. https://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+payback+time+solar+panels+study https://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+payback+time+solar+pa... Hard to imagine a large scale rollout like this would have been on the low quality side (plus hey its Germany after all).
  • elashri 1y ago
    Yes there are many studies that did life cycle assessment of them. This is a good source [1] that analyze about 400 of these life cycle assessments. [1] https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf
    • slow_typist 1y ago
      That is more than ten years old, efficiency of PV is much better today, which probably brings emissions down a bit.
      • kragen 1y ago
        Efficiency has improved somewhat, but also, the cost to manufacture PV is enormously lower than it was then, which means that it's using much less materials and energy to produce. Therefore the energy payback time should be much shorter.
        • slow_typist 1y ago
          How much shorter depends on the fraction of the energy cost in the first place then. Price is not even an upper bound for energy which is cheap in China, and also production is probably subsidised.
• asdefghyk 1y ago
  Maybe a most important benefit is it makes people MORE aware of their actual daily electricity consumption ...?
• nisten69 1y ago
  This would be very cute if it was some 3rd world island country grasping at the straws to improve their quality of life...doing this. But you're fucking Germany bro....where's your massproduced precision reactors and turbines everywhere..the planet needs work...what the f.. are you guys even doing..a rising standard of living means 10-100x more energy you know that right? This whole attitude feels like clapping for a new garden tomato in the middle of a famine... go put some fucking tractors on the field lol but like seriously though.
  • adrianN 1y ago
    Standard of living has been decoupled from energy consumption for quite some time now in developed countries.
    • nisten69 1y ago
      Complemetely untrue. The evidence is pretty clear. There's no such thing as a low energy country with a high standard of living. If I were to pick the #1 thing that most European are literally ignorant about is exactly this fact. Data below: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$cursorMode=hand;;&model$markers$bubble$encoding$y$data$concept=hapiscore_whr&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed@:30&:80;&type:null;;&x$data$concept=energy_use_per_person&source=sg&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed@:0&:16000;&type:null;;&frame$value=2022;&trail$show:false&data$filter$markers$isl=2022&fin=2022&bhr=2022&tur=2022&jpn=2022&kor=2022&deu=2022&cod=2022&kwt=2022&aus=2022&ind=2022&yem=2022&eth=2022&are=2022&sgp=2022&can=2022&chn=2022&irn=2022&zwe=2022&irq=2022&swe=2022&sau=2022&usa=2022;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v2 https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$cursorMode=hand;;...
      • adrianN 1y ago
        That’s why I specified „developed“. Economic growth in developed countries has been decoupled from energy use since the early aughts at least.
    • kragen 1y ago
      That's because they've been in an energy crisis for the last 50 years, so much advancement was by improvement of efficiency. Because of the dramatic cost reductions of photovoltaic modules, that energy crisis is over now.
• john61 1y ago
  I have cut my warm water costs by 80% with balcony solar panels. I have a warm water heating pump with 600 W electrical power. My little server turns it automatically on when the solar access power is greater than 540 W (measured by the smart meter). This generates usually enough warm water for our household. Also the solar panels cover to idle power of the house of 50-100 W very easily during daytime. This pays off in a few years and it reduces my carbon footprint and that of my neighbors.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • vixen99 1y ago
    Yes, but where do you live?
    • zevon 1y ago
      Well, the person you are replying to is in a thread about Germany, mentions balcony solar and said "my little server turns it automatically on" (which is how you would construct that sentence in German instead of "turns it on automatically"), so my wild guess would be Germany. ;)
      • cmenge 1y ago
        Germany isn't that big, but the difference between Freiburg and Hamburg is very significant in this case I believe
        • zevon 1y ago
          Yes, there is a difference, you are right. I don't have hard numbers at the moment (typing from the phone) but from looking it up quickly, the sun's intensity varies from about 950 kWh/m² to about 1.200 kWh/m² between north and south Germany. So, what OP described will generally work in any part of Germany.
        • earthnail 1y ago
• rsanek 1y ago
  should have a (2024) label
• petesergeant 1y ago
  > “Even if we attached panels to all suitable balconies across the country, we’d still only manage to meet 1 percent or less of our overall energy needs” That's a shame, and makes the whole thing feel performative, especially for a country that nixed nuclear.
  • icetank 1y ago
    Total energy need is not equal to total electricity need. And electricity is a lot more expensive then heating energy. So the cost savings can still be significant.
• thiago_fm 1y ago
  I wonder if the solar panels could be tailored themselves to be a balcony, but with a rather distinct look. That would be a massive win. I bet some people wouldn't install it now because it looks kinda meh.
  • aitchnyu 1y ago
    Solar facades can be bought with your desired looks https://solarix-solar.com/en/solar-panels-on-the-facade https://solarix-solar.com/en/solar-panels-on-the-facade
    • thiago_fm 1y ago
      This looks such a beautiful idea. Lovely.
• aszantu 1y ago
  Balcony solar is limited to 700-800 watt for safety reasons. There's also a lobby to get ppl to need an electrician for installation, which is bullshit. Rising energy prices (I paid minimum 50 bucks/Month) and sneaky corporate tactics (they give you 12 ct/kwh then after like half a year make it 60 ct/kwh) makes ppl want more price independence, which is understandable
  • elric 1y ago
    It's only bullshit if you're certain that the electrical installation passes muster. I've seen many installations that are downright dangerous, mostly in older homes and cheap apartments. There's a reason for the 800W limit, that's a little over 3A and shouldn't cause any fires in even the flimsiest of wiring. But erring on the side of caution is not a bad idea when it comes to electrical safety.
• squarefoot 1y ago
  What is the real throughput of panels mounted vertically? I have put solar on my roof plus batteries and it reduced significantly my dependence on gas and cost of heating bills, but they're mounted on two sides so they see the sun from early-mid morning to mid afternoon, with peaks roughly mid day depending on season. I've always been skeptical about vertically mounted ones but people say they work, so not sure what to think.
  • pintxo 1y ago
    You loose performance at noon/summer, when you are likely to produce over your demand anyway. But during winter/rainy days, when you are limited to diffuse light, they deliver the same output. The point is that panels are so dead cheap now, that efficiency of orientation is no longer an issue.
    • tasuki 1y ago
      Approximately how much does a panel generate from diffuse light compared to direct sunlight?
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • pintxo 1y ago
        I‘d say around 10%+. Over a whole month, peak summer production here is 1.4MWh, winter is 0.14MWh.
        • tasuki 1y ago
          Thanks. That's not great: I need more energy in winter...
• brightonos 1y ago
  [flagged]
• lnsru 1y ago
  That’s the thing about statistics - it is only somehow valid at some uncertain date. I know 3 not registered installations. One guy has big photovoltaic installation and installed balcony power plant to cover his special energy needs at sunrise. Another guy works from home and has two balcony power plants to cover his home office needs. Third guy didn’t like batshit crazy registration website and left the installation unregistered, but running.
• numlock86 1y ago
  > Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels A more fitting title would be "Germany's citizens outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels". The current phrasing makes it sound like it's somehow a thing done by the government, which is not the case. If anything the government is one of the many forces slowing down this progress. And yes, I am aware of things like grid security and stability being a concern. I am not complaining.
  • ralfd 1y ago
    Nitpick: Not every house owner is a citizen though.
    • ben_w 1y ago
      There's nits on your nits: most residents (citizen or otherwise) don't own their properties; and while these things do work with houses, they are intended for apartments.
    • polyamid23 1y ago
      For this you do not need to own the property / house / flat, though.
    • wongarsu 1y ago
      Most of them are installed by tenants. Who also aren't all citizens, so you aren't wrong there. Maybe "Germany's resident's" would be more accurate, but of course some small percentage will be installed by landlords who actually reside abroad. You will never get that title to be 100% accurate
  • Ozzie_osman 1y ago
    Given that these things are usually hindered by the government's bureaucracy, maybe the best title would be "Germany's government removes obstacles preventing residents from outfitting..."
    • watwut 1y ago
• alexey-salmin 1y ago
  It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward. Production of electricity like production of steel makes most economical sense at scale. When the economic policy fails so hard it has to resort to backyard anything you know where it's going.
  • pintxo 1y ago
    What a strange take. This is not so much a policy applied from the top, but requested from the bottom. People want to contribute to the transition, and balcony solar installs are a cheap and simple way to do this.
    • alexey-salmin 1y ago
      I do see it as the result of policy applied from the top, the policy that resulted in 2x household electricity prices compared to the US (which amounts to 3x difference if you adjust for median household income). I replied in another thread but I still remember how in my childhood all the ordinary people had to grow potatoes. The state didn't order them to, it just created food shortages that's all. You can say it was voluntary, "not so much a policy applied from the top".
      • morsch 1y ago
        Coincidentally, CO2 emissions per capita in the US are also about 2 times that of Germany.
      • pintxo 1y ago
        This is assuming people don’t want to go net zero, and people not understanding that going there requires change, which will be costly. I‘d argue there is a majority in Germany supporting the transition to green energy, accepting higher prices as a result.
      • jcattle 1y ago
        I don't think that this is comparable. People who struggle with their electricity bills can not afford balcony solar. It has a ROI of a few years with a (low) but comparably large one time upfront cost. With potatoes you only really pay with your time.
• jillesvangurp 1y ago
  Germany did one simple thing (uncharacteristically) which is removing all the bureaucracy here. Just go ahead and do it. It's fine. Cost in the article is cited at 550 euro. I just browsed amazon.de and you can buy complete plug and play kits here in Germany for as little as 239 euro. Most kits are priced between 300-350 euro. I did not see a many kits over 500. I pay about 70 euro per month for electricity. If it saves 10% per month on my bill (7 euro), this would earn itself back within 3 years. At 5% it's 6 years. Not bad for something that costs next to nothing and is pretty much plug and play. You are not going to get very rich from this obviously. But it's kind of cool. Too bad my balcony faces east and is mostly covered by the shadow of other buildings. I can barely grow plants there.
  • grumpy-de-sre 1y ago
    Not a bad legacy for Robert Habeck (along with the wind reforms), the leader we needed but didn't deserve [1][2]. Interestingly he's recently dropped out of politics and taken a teaching role at UC Berkeley. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwVR5JF8Ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwVR5JF8Ok 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxnnVPO9GFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxnnVPO9GFU
    • MrGilbert 1y ago
      According to his Instagram, he is currently working in Copenhagen: https://www.instagram.com/p/DOFwjUfDXdp/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DOFwjUfDXdp/
      • grumpy-de-sre 1y ago
        Thanks for the update! I wonder if he changed his mind on the Berkeley offer [1]. Part time role though so maybe he just hasn't relocated. 1. https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/habeck-gastdozent-berkeley-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/habeck-gastdoz...
        • wvbdmp 1y ago
• m101 1y ago
  No regard for aesthetics of buildings for pitiful power generation. The German state has completely failed to provide users with cheap electricity and it continues to miss-step with incentivising this nonsense. Shame on them.
• pyrale 1y ago
  Possibly one of the worst possible investment choices From a collective point of view when it comes to electricity. One has to question how this choice came to make sense to the german public.
  • adrianN 1y ago
    It costs the state nothing to remove regulations preventing the installations and people who buy one see ROI of 15-20%. It also helps the grid by moving production closer to consumption.
    • pyrale 1y ago
      > It also helps the grid by moving production closer to consumption. On the side of the grid, balcony solar means grid maintenance is supported by less revenue (your utility bill pays for the grid, balcony solar expenses don't). On the side of the producer, it means manageable production means are only amortized when balcony solar isn't producing (this isn't a small factor in a grid where electricity costs frequently reach zero). That increases the cost of electricity when the sun doesn't shine. Another aspect of this is that These factors mean that balcony solar would be unprofitable if power was metered depending on real whole-system costs (e.g. market prices and/or a subscription for the grid). That it is profitable for some actors now just means that the cost system isn't aligned with the billing system. This isn't bad per se (people prefer to have predictable, stable energy costs), but can't be sustained in a system where this imbalance can be arbitraged.
      • adrianN 1y ago
        My bill includes a fixed cost part that is supposed to pay for grid maintenance iirc.
        • pyrale 1y ago
          Out of curiosity, what share of the bill is it on average?
  • 1y ago
• somedude895 1y ago
  It's fitting that solar installations are also very popular in third world countries where the government can't provide reliable / affordable power to their citizens. Godspeed, Germany.
  • adrianN 1y ago
    Cellphones are popular there too, does that make them a bad idea?
• vintagedave 1y ago
  > [The solar panels are] connected to a microinverter plugged into a wall outlet and feed electricity directly into his home. Is this safe, feeding electricity into the local cabling? I recall a discussion on HN a few days ago with someone running a parallel cabling setup and there was _strong_ criticism over electrical safety; that was an entirely parallel set of cabling. How would this work re phase, load, how it balances re the mains input, if it goes through the fuse box, etc?
  • FabCH 1y ago
    The microinverter gets the timing signal from the grid and certified microinverters kill the power if they lose mains power. You are also only allowed to install a couple hundred watts yourself like this, anything above 800 Wp still requires a professional.
• e2e4 1y ago
  related recent discussion on YC about DIY solar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45476820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45476820
• ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  This is the next step to people realising that building the walls of buildings from PV panels makes sense.
  • aitchnyu 1y ago
    And it can look good and match whitewashed or earthy buildings https://solarix-solar.com/en/solar-panels-on-the-facade https://solarix-solar.com/en/solar-panels-on-the-facade
• JamesAdir 1y ago
  The energy savings are great, but it makes buildings super ugly. Why not putting them on roofs?
  • ivanche 1y ago
    Balconies are private, roofs ain't.
• pembrook 1y ago
  It's clear that hackernews is a DIY crowd and loves this idea. I'm pro letting people do whatever they want and whatever makes them feel good. HOWEVER, I have to point out how incredibly silly this is. There is a reason why historically we have pooled our resources under the government to produce and manage energy infrastructure centrally. Let's say these 500,000 individuals instead pooled their 1,000 euro (including installation & time) and funded one industrial-scale solar development. You could generate a renewable 600MW+ (a 4X factor on what these randomly placed individual units will ever deliver in reality) for that money. And efficient centralized battery storage also becomes an option there. Then your fellow citizens can spend time creating surplus value in the field they are actually experts in and also you don't have a 3rd world hellscape of outdated balcony solar units to look at out your window for the next 30 years.
• Tepix 1y ago
  Decentralisation is the way to go for energy. Instead of having huge powerplants and fat power lines having a large percentage of the needed energy produced locally is ideal. Nowadays, having some solar and a battery is very affordable and means you don't need power from the grid perhaps 80% of the time. And with batteries soon getting a lot cheaper ( https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/catl-sodium-ion-battery-packs/ https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/catl-sodium-ion-battery-packs/ ) and photovoltaics continuing their price trajectory, soon most alternatives will be unattractive, in particular nuclear.
• linksfaschist 1y ago
  [dead]
• owenversteeg 1y ago
  There's a funny comment downthread that says "It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward." Everyone replying disagrees, but I think it's a perfect analogy: just like the backyard furnaces, these small-scale installations are inefficient, provide a negligible portion of total energy needs (<1% of total energy needs if everyone in Germany did it, from TFA), look ugly and - this is the most important - provide the feeling of doing something about a serious problem without actually doing anything substantial.
  • Slartie 1y ago
    Actually, it is pretty common for homeowners to first install a balcony solar power plant and eventually "upgrading" to a full-scale solar power installation on the roof. The first is very easy and cheap to do and can be done on a weekend, the latter is costly, requires dealing with bureaucracy and partially-sleazy system sellers, and thus requires overcoming way more substantial hurdles, for which one must muster the motivation first. Balcony solar power plants are sort of a gateway drug into actual, practical participation in the renewable energy sector. They are easy to install, cheap, have a clear and fast way to profitability, and provide significant gamification value (people who buy these kits tend to start with constantly monitoring their energy generation and usage in apps afterwards). That "ice breaker" effect should not be underestimated. It can pave the way to way more substantial actions (or to the acceptance of actions taken by others) that people wouldn't have considered otherwise simply due to inertia of the status quo. > look ugly That is YOUR taste. I consider most balconies with solar panels to look futuristic and cool. Garden houses with solar panels on the roof also look way cooler and more modern than without them.
  • tootie 1y ago
    1% of Germany's power needs sound like an awful lot to me.
    • owenversteeg 1y ago
      *energy And yes, 1% of German energy is a ton of energy; but that is an incredibly optimistic forecast of if _every_ German did this. There are 85 million Germans; they could do a lot of things with their combined efforts. Backyard furnaces produced millions of tons of steel; seems like a very apt comparison. I actually have solar of my own. It powered my entire life (off grid!) for years. That still doesn't mean I think individual small-scale solar is a meaningful solution to the climate crisis. The biggest risk around climate, in my opinion, is the risk that people and governments think "we're doing something" when they are not. In this case, balcony solar has a very short payback time (a claimed 5 years for one guy's install! That is preposterously short for any investment!) because of the strange way that residential power is priced. If people really paid for the power and the grid infrastructure in relation to the real costs, balcony solar would never pay itself back, but essentially nobody understands that. Instead, they see the large amount they're saving and mentally that magnifies the impact of what they're doing. From the various posts I found, an ideal, un-shaded install produces between 200 and 500 kWh per year, depending on orientation and size. Obviously any sort of shading would drop that off a cliff. Compare that with the 38 MWh (38,000 kWh) per year of primary energy that the average German consumes... In a way, it is a sort of modern indulgence. ------ Here are some yearly numbers on the Chinese steel industry at that time as a whole: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/factbox-a-history-of-chinas-steel-sector-idUSBRE84203A/ https://www.reuters.com/article/business/factbox-a-history-o...
• infecto 1y ago
  I hope the US can have more of this. I never thought solar on most resi roofs made any sense. The cost is high, lots of risk from leaks but building a patio with a pergola or other shaded structure? Sign me up. The Us should be fighting to lower the red tape to get these kind of systems in place.
• maelito 1y ago
  I wouldn't do this in my place. Having a balcony already makes your interior less bright and "closed". Blocking sunlight (even compared to semi-opaque balustrades) would make it worse, for a final energy gain that is quite small compared to central electricity production.
• fcpk 1y ago
  This highlights a sad fact: renting is becoming the new long term standard for the younger generations. The buying market is out of reach to 95+% of the population, and so people resort to small hacks like this rather than install full solar sets. Meanwhile landowners and real estate funds are getting richer and laughing at them. Totally dystopian.
• Randomizer42 1y ago
  [dead]
• MagicMoonlight 1y ago
  Aren’t these the ones where you plug a live wire directly into the wall socket, with zero hardware to prevent surges or fires? Not sure it’s a good idea really
• silexia 1y ago
  Such a stupid government policy. The panels would be far more efficient on the roof of the complex.
• tdiff 1y ago
  Beginning with > “Even if we attached panels to all suitable balconies across the country, we’d still only manage to meet 1 percent or less of our overall energy needs,” the article concludes that the most prominent effect of balcony panels is of psychological nature. At best it pays out in 5 years. Our landlord, for example, requires the panel to be installed by certified professionals, hence it will take even longer to break even, even assuming the device will not malfunction during the time, which I am sceptical about, especially when talking about the cheapest sets from amazon/kaufland.