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Solar Balconies Take Europe by Storm
- SoftTalker 7mo ago> They come with small inverters to convert the DC output of the solar panels into AC power, which plug straight into an existing home power socket. Hopefully these inverters are smart enough to cut the feed if the AC mains power goes out, to avoid backfeeding utility lines that may be under repair.
- telotortium 7mo agoI think this is why they're supposed to be limited to 800 W, but is that enough to avoid serious danger to utility workers when a whole apartment building or neighborhood is full of these?
- namibj 7mo agoCentral Europe has more buried electrical systems and nothing is safe until it's actively grounded so hard it'll arc flash the idiot who broke you LOTO before you even feel a clear tingle. The 800W is about grid management impact limitation to levels that do not warrant the utility imposing any "but we first have to upgrade the substation before we can get you your local transformer with the higher speed EV charging and McMansion winter full heat pump setup" delays before you are allowed to turn it on/grid-tie it.
- adrianN 7mo agoThey are limited to prevent fires. They sit behind the breakers so any power they feed in allows more current on the cables before the breakers trip.
- InvisibleUp 7mo agoYes. Any system that’s UL 3700 (or more generally IEEE 1547 / UL 1741) compliant mandates anti-islanding by shutting off the power within two seconds of grid loss.
- couchand 7mo agoFortunately they do, and in fact the article makes that clear. +1 for reading to the end of the paragraph that was quoted.
- jacquesm 7mo agoYou can't buy an inverter that is certified that doesn't do this. As well as a whole raft of other safety measures and grid quality measures besides. See for instance: https://www.netbeheernederland.nl/sites/default/files/2024-03/rfg_compliance_verification_document_v2.0.pdf https://www.netbeheernederland.nl/sites/default/files/2024-0... Every region has their own set of rules which requires inverter manufacturers to have a bunch of different settings depending on where the inverter is installed.
- testing22321 7mo agoI really hope these become legal in Canada. Right now it seems Utah is the only jurisdiction in North America where they are
- bigthymer 7mo agoVirginia recently became the 2nd state to allow it. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/virginia-to-become-second-state-balcony-solar https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/virginia-to-becom...
- rickydroll 7mo agoThere are two types of balcony solar. One is bidirectional power flow, i.e., classical balcony solar, and the other is called "zero export", in which a current flow direction sensor on your mains throttles back your inverter if you start to reverse the current flow and export power. Where I live, in the US, National Grid is okay with balcony solar as long as it's a zero-export balcony solar. Your power utility may take a similar approach. They might also take a "if it doesn't cross the meter, and we can't tell what you're doing, then we can't tell you not to do it"
- gizmo686 7mo agoAnything that requires an electrician to come and modify your mains connections (followed, presumably by a municipal inspection), defeats the main benefit of balcony solar, which is that it is a commodity unit that can be installed by non-experts without any red tape. Further, the utility's safety concerns do not require any shut off on the mains. Their safty concern is not a new backflow of current; but a backflow of current into an otherwise non-energized grid. Grid-tied inverters will not do this. If the grid goes down, they shut themselves down without any need for an upstream shutoff. The utility's may have a reasonable business object to back-flow if their meters are such that backflow forces net-metering. Around here, that is a non-issue because net-metering is the law for residential connections anyway. Even in juristictions where net-metering is not the law, I don't find this convincing. The limited capacity of balcony solar means that it won't actually happen in any significant amount, and if it does become a problem, they can shoulder the cost of upgrading their metering equipment.
- bamboozled 7mo agoThe only negative thing I feel about all of this is that we're doing now. Once the glaciers are farked, the snow is going and the mass die offs are started. Better late than never they say, but why the hell didn't we just invest in this in the 1990s?
- SoftTalker 7mo agoSolar panels were expensive and not very efficient then.
- bamboozled 7mo agoDo you think more investment / subsidies weren't possible over the last few decades?
- Tade0 7mo agoThey were and Germany was actually going in that direction, but it took the manufacturing scale of China to create an incentive to introduce the hundreds of minor changes necessary to get costs down.
- leonidasrup 7mo agoDon't discount the importance of cheap Chinese (mostly coal) electricity. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/02/18/chinas-cheap-electricity-crowds-out-foreign-polysilicon/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/02/18/chinas-cheap-electric...
- ZeroGravitas 7mo agoIf it is so cheap why does your source say it was subsidized?
- harvey9 7mo agoThat's not a contradiction. From the point of view of the factory or household consuming it, it is cheap.
- adrianN 7mo agoI have 2kW of panels on my balcony and 4kWh of batteries. I'm happy with the setup. I expect it to pay for itself in just a few years. The only thing I wish it had is open APIs to control the inverter and the batteries, ideally over bluetooth, so that I'm not forced to use an app.
- effdee 7mo agoIf port 502/TCP is open you can probably access it via Modbus protocol. Implementing a Modbus client is trivial. My rebranded Fox ESS hardware has it enabled and there's even official documentation of the so-called "registers".
- herbst 7mo agoI use victron devices and a litime battery + an esp32 of your choice and some LLM magic to read and relay data from Bluetooth to web. For both victron and litime plenty of examples exist, including home assistant integrations.
- xigurat 7mo agoSolakon One has a quite decent API you can control without cloud being involved...
- ChrisArchitect 7mo agoRelated: Iran war sparks renewables boom as Europeans rush to buy solar, heat pumps, EVs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601310
- bamboozled 7mo agoDrill baby drill...
- M95D 7mo ago... holes into the balcony railing.
- mudil 7mo agoIs this supposed to be a revolutionary European invention?
- widdershins 7mo agoNeither the title nor the article implied so.
- WithinReason 7mo ago"In 1839, the ability of some materials to create an electrical charge from light exposure was first observed by the French physicist Edmond Becquerel" So yes
- thebeardredis 7mo ago[dead]
- inejge 7mo agoHehe "Balkonkraftwerk", available from Lidl for €250 (see TFA). This makes me unreasonably happy for some reason.
- Markoff 7mo agodupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598378
- kkfx 7mo agoAll to deny the fact that new deal is incompatible with dense cities. Sorry but do the math and you realize that the future is homes and sheds, not condos.
- muskstinks 7mo agoWhat 'new deal'? If you talk about Solar and PV, it adds value already independen of how little it is. Even dense city has roofs on top. Also they have highways which have plenty direct space next to them were no one wants to live or grow produce (due to polution)