5 ms·

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

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.
    - plantain 1y ago
      The fact the economics of DIY make sense, is the evidence of the market/state failure. (whether they really do make sense without fanciful efficiency calculations, I leave to you). https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap-when-its-not https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap...
      - cycomanic 1y ago
        I think you need to make some better arguments to convince. Your argument only makes sense when wholesale cost of solar panels is significantly cheaper than retail. The better the economics of scale (i.e the smaller the difference between wholesale and retail) the more favourable "DYI" becomes, because the person had home does not need to cover the overheads that are necessary for large scale installations (financing, management, transmission, planning...). It's the same reason that hiring a vps to run all your compute is not necessarily cheaper than buying your own pc.
      - rcxdude 1y ago
        It makes sense for two reasons: firstly there's limited economies of scale in solar panels: they more or less make the same amount of energy per unit area and per dollar regardless of the size of the installation (rooftop is usually more expensive for installation but these systems have near zero installation cost). Secondly, because the generation is local you're not paying for any margin, co-ordination costs, or transmission costs. This secondary effect is already enough to offset the increased cost of rooftop installation in many cases. (And maybe you can consider this a market failure, in that it doesn't fit some naïve idea of an efficient market, but you're always going to be paying for someone to make and take on the risk of the big, centralised version of things)
GaggiX 1y ago
Solar power is fundamentally different from traditional power plants because it's modular. Since the panel is the basic unit, a network of rooftop systems is as effective as a single large installation. A rooftop installation makes perfect sense.
- plantain 1y ago
  Paying contractors to climb on rooftops one at a time and cable up a million distinct houses is clearly not comparable to an industrial installation. Similarly the generation from a balcony on a bad angle, and from walking around Germany, typically shaded, makes no sense.
  - GaggiX 1y ago
    You are completely ignoring the biggest cost: land. In a dense country like Germany, using millions of existing, "free" rooftops is vastly more efficient and economical than buying and dedicating scarce, expensive land for an industrial-scale farm. Also rooftop solar generates power at the point of consumption. This significantly reduces the need for new, expensive high-voltage transmission lines.
    - plantain 1y ago
      A hectare of land is a few hundred euros per year to rent - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Agricultural_land_prices_and_rents_-_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... Power consumption in the EU has flatlined and is even falling. New HV transmission lines are not needed - put the solar farms next to some of the shut down nuclear plants (as we now do with big batteries in Australia and decrepit coal plants).
      - GaggiX 1y ago
        >A hectare of land is a few hundred euros per year to rent Acquiring land-use rights, permitting, environmental reviews, and zoning changes for an industrial power plant costs far more than the raw rent. >Power consumption in the EU has flatlined This is dangerously short-sighted, the mass adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps will place enormous new demands on the grid. > put the solar farms next to some of the shut down nuclear plants Solar is much more land demanding than what the decommissioned sites of nuclear power plants can offer.
kumarvvr 1y ago
> Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale Because there is always a good amount of loss in transmissions. For solar, the best thing for grid and consumers is to have it very very close to consumption. Ideally, a home with a good capacity battery, coupled with solar panels, and a smart grid connected controller that charges the batteries based on grid conditions of demand and supply, would be a great system. Costly, but good for the grid.
- plantain 1y ago
  The transmission losses are trivial. 5-10% max. It makes no sense to isolate batteries behind meters. Sharing batteries on a neighborhood or suburban level would make far more sense. We are meant to be a society, not libertarians living in proximity.
  - thiago_fm 1y ago
    That is so wrong, both your take about transmission losses and the expectations that there is enough land in a 'neighborhood' to do that.
chihuahua 1y ago
Perhaps the explanation is that it's not something that's useful or rational, but rather, something that fulfills emotional needs of some customers. It makes them feel good. And the manufacturers found they can profit from selling these things, so they sell these things.
- plantain 1y ago
  I think you are exactly correct. As the state fails, it feels good to take some personal control.
- adrianN 1y ago
  It is completely rational to install one of these. The paypack times are just a few years, depending on how sunny the balcony is.
  - slow_typist 1y ago
    Well not if you value the time you put into the project, that can easily double or triple the payback time.
    - adrianN 1y ago
      It takes literally two hours to install and plug it in if you have two left hands like me.
      - slow_typist 1y ago
        Plus the time getting the material, driving to the hardware store another time to get something you forgot, doing the registration, plus the time needed for planning/ calculation of economical feasibility/ decision making. Even at a very moderate 50 € per hour rate (for the typical Gamer) the material cost is the smallest part of the project. Treat it as a hobby, but don’t tell me it is an investment.
        1y ago
kragen 1y ago
It may be actually better (in the welfare-economics sense) to build the micro-scale setups because the economies of scale may actually be inverted by cheap solar panels. See my analysis in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051.
- plantain 1y ago
  I don't think so. This is well studied. The LCOE of rooftop solar is terrible compared to utility. I can't imagine what it looks like for balcony. https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap-when-its-not https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap...
  - kragen 1y ago
    That page, although it was written only four months ago, is citing LCOE figures from 02021, when mainstream solar panels cost €0.25 per peak watt. Now they cost €0.100 per peak watt—see https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis.... Power electronics and batteries are also enormously cheaper now. Also, note that the LCOE numbers it cites are for the US, where most of the costs stem from the US government's anti-renewable-energy policies such as punitive tariffs, policies that are not in effect in Germany. That page also undermines its credibility by citing the hypothesis that the low cost at the time (which it acknowledges was already down to 36% of the number in 02012) was because the "massive wave of imports" was "subsidized by China’s central bank"; if that were the case, you'd expect that once China owned the world's solar market, the prices would have gone back up to reflect the true costs of manufacturing the panels, so that China's central bank could stop hemorrhaging money in these subsidies. Instead, the prices have continued to drop. They've dropped as much in the four years since that report as they had in the nine years before it. And, if you read the Department of Commerce filings justifying the "anti-dumping" tariffs, you will find that the arguments being made about "subsidies" are transparently ridiculous; the supposed "subsidies" include the fact that Chinese panel manufacturers pay their workers less than Turkish electronic assembly workers, and the fact that they have good public infrastructure to use. It also incorrectly claims that solar panels need to be replaced after 25–30 years (that's just the warranty period) and that doing so would add US$20–30/MWh to Lazard's US$36/MWh LCOE, which is an obviously an arithmetic error that's off by orders of magnitude. But its central claim, that rooftop solar is much more expensive than utility-scale solar, is actually true. The reason for this is mostly that rooftop solar requires much more labor and enjoys poorer economies of scale. You have to pay someone to design custom racking for your particular roof and a custom inverter and battery storage system for your house, pay someone to climb up on your roof and possibly die, pay for permitting and inspection, etc. You can find a more detailed breakdown of "turnkey installed cost" in SEIA's Solar Market Insight Report https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-q2-2024 https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight.... However, all of these factors are completely the other way around for balcony power plants. You don't climb on the roof; you walk out onto the balcony. You don't design custom racking; you buy an off-the-shelf retail product. The same thing for battery storage, if you buy a system with battery backup. Instead of spending thousands of dollars, you just hang the solar panel off your balcony like a potted plant and plug the plug into the outlet. The engineering is being done at the factory for a mass-market product, not for your house or for a single utility-scale solar farm. So you're spending less in engineering and permitting and construction costs than a utility-scale solar farm would, not more. There is one way in which balcony power plants are worse than rooftop solar: they are at terrible angles, so they don't get much sun. But that just means you get less power, maybe two or three times less than you'd get in an optimally-designed utility-scale plant. That matters much less now that solar modules are so cheap.
marcosdumay 1y ago
The cost of solar power is close to independent of scale, so the benefit of doing those industrial scale plants is often smaller than the one for repurposing some bit of underused land. There's nothing absurd about it.
- plantain 1y ago
  It's 10x more expensive. https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap-when-its-not https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap...
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    From your source, it's "at least 4 times more expensive", while at the same time it doubts the correctness of the numbers on large-scale plants and thinks it's too low. Besides, it's all numbers from 4 years ago, when people weren't all putting solar panels on their balconies. And the report about gains from scale mention things like the lack of tracking in small scale installations, that the large-scale ones haven't used for many years now. So propose that your numbers are all wrong.
hamandcheese 1y ago
> Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale This seems like a false dichotomy to me. Germany is a pretty rich company. They can do both if they want to.
- pyrale 1y ago
  > Germany is a pretty rich company You're way ahead of my predicted cyberpunk timeline.
  - hamandcheese 1y ago
    lol, I of course meant country but just got a good laugh :)
zevon 1y ago
Why not approach the problem from all sides? There are big renewable projects in Germany as well, of course, but they take time to build, the grid needs to be adapted to handle them and there are many, many people/organizations who oppose all big installations that "block their view of nature" or whatever, so the big projects take even longer. By the way, this (nasty neighbours) would be a big issue for Balkonkraftwerke as well if they had not added them to a list of privileged things you are allowed to equip your house with (without permission process).
grumpy-de-sre 1y ago
The fact that balcony solar has such short payback periods really emphasizes the scale of the failure. Why can't utility scale operators use bulk purchases of the exact same panels, in a more optimal installation (south facing, unshaded etc) to achieve similar or better payback periods? Balcony solar is a whole lot like Uber, a way to side step onerous regulators, landlords that won't permit/invest in rooftop installations, planning approvals, transmission bottlenecks (eg. SuedLink [1] being forced to use underground cables) etc. The German government tolerates it because it keeps voters happy and helps reduce dependence on foreign gas. At the end of the day though balcony solar is better than nothing, so let's not let perfect be the enemy of the good. 1. https://www.jacobs.com/projects/Germany-SuedLink https://www.jacobs.com/projects/Germany-SuedLink
- morsch 1y ago
  > Why can't utility scale operators use bulk purchases of the exact same panels, in a more optimal installation (south facing, unshaded etc) to achieve similar or better payback periods? Utility scale operators added about 17 GW (peak) solar in 2024, so about 20x as much. https://strom-report.com/photovoltaik/ https://strom-report.com/photovoltaik/
  - grumpy-de-sre 1y ago
    Exactly! Wind expansion has been going great as-well. I guess the more fundamental question is why these expansions haven't led to savings for energy consumers and why the economics of these micro-systems are so attractive.
    - morsch 1y ago
      Wind expansion isn't that great actually. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energie/Erzeugung/Tabellen/bruttostromerzeugung.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ... https://www.wind-energie.de/fileadmin/redaktion/dokumente/publikationen-oeffentlich/themen/06-zahlen-und-fakten/20250115_Status_des_Windenergieausbaus_an_Land_Jahr_2024.pdf https://www.wind-energie.de/fileadmin/redaktion/dokumente/pu... Looking at who's responsible for policy now, I don't see things improving. Happy to be proven wrong though.
bulbar 1y ago
That seem to be the conclusion when you start with the assumption "vertical scaling is always the best option". When you don't start with that assumption, maybe you reach a different conclusion.
__bjoernd 1y ago
Are you seriously asking why individuals are supposed to take responsibility for themselves?
slightwinder 1y ago
It's mainly corruption, ignorance and incompetence. Germany has a strong fossil-lobby, because of industries and ancient home-tech. Around 15 Years ago, Germany had a strong solar-industry too, until the government basically buried it and sold it out to China, because of "failures" happening. Till today, there are forces trying to feed on nuclear-power and cheap Russian gas, while simultaneously sabotaging all renewables and electrification. It's so bad, they are willing to destroy whole industries for this BS.
m101 1y ago
This is exactly right. Germany has failed to provide low cost electricity at scale and has now incentivised placing panels everywhere, even on those beautiful balconies we once invested in. It is not surprising that you are being downvoted by the solar stasi.
flohofwoe 1y ago
'Industrial scale' projects are also happening and they are quite easy to find on Google Maps, for instance around Berlin there are some pretty big areas covered in solar panels: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6242449,14.2273341,7219m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6242449,14.2273341,7219m/dat... https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6993717,14.2185555,3756m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6993717,14.2185555,3756m/dat... https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6476471,13.6945097,2856m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6476471,13.6945097,2856m/dat... https://www.google.com/maps/@53.0173558,13.5345601,4387m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@53.0173558,13.5345601,4387m/dat... Or this one near Leipzig in a former lignite mining area: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1680221,12.4092084,4502m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1680221,12.4092084,4502m/dat... (interestingly most of those seem to be located in former East Germany - probably because land ownership isn't fragmented as much as in former West Germany due to the forced farmland sequestration after WW2). ...and smaller solar fields exist nearly everywhere (even in the back of the woods where I was born: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.5463975,12.9038206,658m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@50.5463975,12.9038206,658m/data...) E.g. why not build renewables at all possible scales?

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.
  - plantain 1y ago
    The fact the economics of DIY make sense, is the evidence of the market/state failure. (whether they really do make sense without fanciful efficiency calculations, I leave to you). https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap-when-its-not https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap...
    - cycomanic 1y ago
      I think you need to make some better arguments to convince. Your argument only makes sense when wholesale cost of solar panels is significantly cheaper than retail. The better the economics of scale (i.e the smaller the difference between wholesale and retail) the more favourable "DYI" becomes, because the person had home does not need to cover the overheads that are necessary for large scale installations (financing, management, transmission, planning...). It's the same reason that hiring a vps to run all your compute is not necessarily cheaper than buying your own pc.
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      It makes sense for two reasons: firstly there's limited economies of scale in solar panels: they more or less make the same amount of energy per unit area and per dollar regardless of the size of the installation (rooftop is usually more expensive for installation but these systems have near zero installation cost). Secondly, because the generation is local you're not paying for any margin, co-ordination costs, or transmission costs. This secondary effect is already enough to offset the increased cost of rooftop installation in many cases. (And maybe you can consider this a market failure, in that it doesn't fit some naïve idea of an efficient market, but you're always going to be paying for someone to make and take on the risk of the big, centralised version of things)

GaggiX 1y ago

Solar power is fundamentally different from traditional power plants because it's modular. Since the panel is the basic unit, a network of rooftop systems is as effective as a single large installation. A rooftop installation makes perfect sense.

plantain 1y ago
Paying contractors to climb on rooftops one at a time and cable up a million distinct houses is clearly not comparable to an industrial installation. Similarly the generation from a balcony on a bad angle, and from walking around Germany, typically shaded, makes no sense.
- GaggiX 1y ago
  You are completely ignoring the biggest cost: land. In a dense country like Germany, using millions of existing, "free" rooftops is vastly more efficient and economical than buying and dedicating scarce, expensive land for an industrial-scale farm. Also rooftop solar generates power at the point of consumption. This significantly reduces the need for new, expensive high-voltage transmission lines.
  - plantain 1y ago
    A hectare of land is a few hundred euros per year to rent - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Agricultural_land_prices_and_rents_-_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... Power consumption in the EU has flatlined and is even falling. New HV transmission lines are not needed - put the solar farms next to some of the shut down nuclear plants (as we now do with big batteries in Australia and decrepit coal plants).
    - GaggiX 1y ago
      >A hectare of land is a few hundred euros per year to rent Acquiring land-use rights, permitting, environmental reviews, and zoning changes for an industrial power plant costs far more than the raw rent. >Power consumption in the EU has flatlined This is dangerously short-sighted, the mass adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps will place enormous new demands on the grid. > put the solar farms next to some of the shut down nuclear plants Solar is much more land demanding than what the decommissioned sites of nuclear power plants can offer.

kumarvvr 1y ago

> Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale Because there is always a good amount of loss in transmissions. For solar, the best thing for grid and consumers is to have it very very close to consumption. Ideally, a home with a good capacity battery, coupled with solar panels, and a smart grid connected controller that charges the batteries based on grid conditions of demand and supply, would be a great system. Costly, but good for the grid.

plantain 1y ago
The transmission losses are trivial. 5-10% max. It makes no sense to isolate batteries behind meters. Sharing batteries on a neighborhood or suburban level would make far more sense. We are meant to be a society, not libertarians living in proximity.
- thiago_fm 1y ago
  That is so wrong, both your take about transmission losses and the expectations that there is enough land in a 'neighborhood' to do that.

chihuahua 1y ago

Perhaps the explanation is that it's not something that's useful or rational, but rather, something that fulfills emotional needs of some customers. It makes them feel good. And the manufacturers found they can profit from selling these things, so they sell these things.

plantain 1y ago
I think you are exactly correct. As the state fails, it feels good to take some personal control.
adrianN 1y ago
It is completely rational to install one of these. The paypack times are just a few years, depending on how sunny the balcony is.
- slow_typist 1y ago
  Well not if you value the time you put into the project, that can easily double or triple the payback time.
  - adrianN 1y ago
    It takes literally two hours to install and plug it in if you have two left hands like me.
    - slow_typist 1y ago
      Plus the time getting the material, driving to the hardware store another time to get something you forgot, doing the registration, plus the time needed for planning/ calculation of economical feasibility/ decision making. Even at a very moderate 50 € per hour rate (for the typical Gamer) the material cost is the smallest part of the project. Treat it as a hobby, but don’t tell me it is an investment.
      - 1y ago

kragen 1y ago

It may be actually better (in the welfare-economics sense) to build the micro-scale setups because the economies of scale may actually be inverted by cheap solar panels. See my analysis in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487051.

plantain 1y ago
I don't think so. This is well studied. The LCOE of rooftop solar is terrible compared to utility. I can't imagine what it looks like for balcony. https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap-when-its-not https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap...
- kragen 1y ago
  That page, although it was written only four months ago, is citing LCOE figures from 02021, when mainstream solar panels cost €0.25 per peak watt. Now they cost €0.100 per peak watt—see https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis.... Power electronics and batteries are also enormously cheaper now. Also, note that the LCOE numbers it cites are for the US, where most of the costs stem from the US government's anti-renewable-energy policies such as punitive tariffs, policies that are not in effect in Germany. That page also undermines its credibility by citing the hypothesis that the low cost at the time (which it acknowledges was already down to 36% of the number in 02012) was because the "massive wave of imports" was "subsidized by China’s central bank"; if that were the case, you'd expect that once China owned the world's solar market, the prices would have gone back up to reflect the true costs of manufacturing the panels, so that China's central bank could stop hemorrhaging money in these subsidies. Instead, the prices have continued to drop. They've dropped as much in the four years since that report as they had in the nine years before it. And, if you read the Department of Commerce filings justifying the "anti-dumping" tariffs, you will find that the arguments being made about "subsidies" are transparently ridiculous; the supposed "subsidies" include the fact that Chinese panel manufacturers pay their workers less than Turkish electronic assembly workers, and the fact that they have good public infrastructure to use. It also incorrectly claims that solar panels need to be replaced after 25–30 years (that's just the warranty period) and that doing so would add US$20–30/MWh to Lazard's US$36/MWh LCOE, which is an obviously an arithmetic error that's off by orders of magnitude. But its central claim, that rooftop solar is much more expensive than utility-scale solar, is actually true. The reason for this is mostly that rooftop solar requires much more labor and enjoys poorer economies of scale. You have to pay someone to design custom racking for your particular roof and a custom inverter and battery storage system for your house, pay someone to climb up on your roof and possibly die, pay for permitting and inspection, etc. You can find a more detailed breakdown of "turnkey installed cost" in SEIA's Solar Market Insight Report https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-q2-2024 https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight.... However, all of these factors are completely the other way around for balcony power plants. You don't climb on the roof; you walk out onto the balcony. You don't design custom racking; you buy an off-the-shelf retail product. The same thing for battery storage, if you buy a system with battery backup. Instead of spending thousands of dollars, you just hang the solar panel off your balcony like a potted plant and plug the plug into the outlet. The engineering is being done at the factory for a mass-market product, not for your house or for a single utility-scale solar farm. So you're spending less in engineering and permitting and construction costs than a utility-scale solar farm would, not more. There is one way in which balcony power plants are worse than rooftop solar: they are at terrible angles, so they don't get much sun. But that just means you get less power, maybe two or three times less than you'd get in an optimally-designed utility-scale plant. That matters much less now that solar modules are so cheap.

marcosdumay 1y ago

The cost of solar power is close to independent of scale, so the benefit of doing those industrial scale plants is often smaller than the one for repurposing some bit of underused land. There's nothing absurd about it.

plantain 1y ago
It's 10x more expensive. https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap-when-its-not https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/solar-is-only-cheap...
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  From your source, it's "at least 4 times more expensive", while at the same time it doubts the correctness of the numbers on large-scale plants and thinks it's too low. Besides, it's all numbers from 4 years ago, when people weren't all putting solar panels on their balconies. And the report about gains from scale mention things like the lack of tracking in small scale installations, that the large-scale ones haven't used for many years now. So propose that your numbers are all wrong.

hamandcheese 1y ago

> Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale This seems like a false dichotomy to me. Germany is a pretty rich company. They can do both if they want to.

pyrale 1y ago
> Germany is a pretty rich company You're way ahead of my predicted cyberpunk timeline.
- hamandcheese 1y ago
  lol, I of course meant country but just got a good laugh :)

zevon 1y ago

Why not approach the problem from all sides? There are big renewable projects in Germany as well, of course, but they take time to build, the grid needs to be adapted to handle them and there are many, many people/organizations who oppose all big installations that "block their view of nature" or whatever, so the big projects take even longer. By the way, this (nasty neighbours) would be a big issue for Balkonkraftwerke as well if they had not added them to a list of privileged things you are allowed to equip your house with (without permission process).

grumpy-de-sre 1y ago

The fact that balcony solar has such short payback periods really emphasizes the scale of the failure. Why can't utility scale operators use bulk purchases of the exact same panels, in a more optimal installation (south facing, unshaded etc) to achieve similar or better payback periods? Balcony solar is a whole lot like Uber, a way to side step onerous regulators, landlords that won't permit/invest in rooftop installations, planning approvals, transmission bottlenecks (eg. SuedLink [1] being forced to use underground cables) etc. The German government tolerates it because it keeps voters happy and helps reduce dependence on foreign gas. At the end of the day though balcony solar is better than nothing, so let's not let perfect be the enemy of the good. 1. https://www.jacobs.com/projects/Germany-SuedLink https://www.jacobs.com/projects/Germany-SuedLink

morsch 1y ago
> Why can't utility scale operators use bulk purchases of the exact same panels, in a more optimal installation (south facing, unshaded etc) to achieve similar or better payback periods? Utility scale operators added about 17 GW (peak) solar in 2024, so about 20x as much. https://strom-report.com/photovoltaik/ https://strom-report.com/photovoltaik/
- grumpy-de-sre 1y ago
  Exactly! Wind expansion has been going great as-well. I guess the more fundamental question is why these expansions haven't led to savings for energy consumers and why the economics of these micro-systems are so attractive.
  - morsch 1y ago
    Wind expansion isn't that great actually. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energie/Erzeugung/Tabellen/bruttostromerzeugung.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ... https://www.wind-energie.de/fileadmin/redaktion/dokumente/publikationen-oeffentlich/themen/06-zahlen-und-fakten/20250115_Status_des_Windenergieausbaus_an_Land_Jahr_2024.pdf https://www.wind-energie.de/fileadmin/redaktion/dokumente/pu... Looking at who's responsible for policy now, I don't see things improving. Happy to be proven wrong though.

bulbar 1y ago

That seem to be the conclusion when you start with the assumption "vertical scaling is always the best option". When you don't start with that assumption, maybe you reach a different conclusion.

__bjoernd 1y ago

Are you seriously asking why individuals are supposed to take responsibility for themselves?

slightwinder 1y ago

It's mainly corruption, ignorance and incompetence. Germany has a strong fossil-lobby, because of industries and ancient home-tech. Around 15 Years ago, Germany had a strong solar-industry too, until the government basically buried it and sold it out to China, because of "failures" happening. Till today, there are forces trying to feed on nuclear-power and cheap Russian gas, while simultaneously sabotaging all renewables and electrification. It's so bad, they are willing to destroy whole industries for this BS.

m101 1y ago

This is exactly right. Germany has failed to provide low cost electricity at scale and has now incentivised placing panels everywhere, even on those beautiful balconies we once invested in. It is not surprising that you are being downvoted by the solar stasi.

flohofwoe 1y ago

'Industrial scale' projects are also happening and they are quite easy to find on Google Maps, for instance around Berlin there are some pretty big areas covered in solar panels: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6242449,14.2273341,7219m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6242449,14.2273341,7219m/dat... https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6993717,14.2185555,3756m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6993717,14.2185555,3756m/dat... https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6476471,13.6945097,2856m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@52.6476471,13.6945097,2856m/dat... https://www.google.com/maps/@53.0173558,13.5345601,4387m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@53.0173558,13.5345601,4387m/dat... Or this one near Leipzig in a former lignite mining area: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1680221,12.4092084,4502m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1680221,12.4092084,4502m/dat... (interestingly most of those seem to be located in former East Germany - probably because land ownership isn't fragmented as much as in former West Germany due to the forced farmland sequestration after WW2). ...and smaller solar fields exist nearly everywhere (even in the back of the woods where I was born: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.5463975,12.9038206,658m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@50.5463975,12.9038206,658m/data...) E.g. why not build renewables at all possible scales?