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Balcony Solar: $1.74/watt direct plug-in solar
- otterley 2mo agoSo that's what an old-school infomercial translated to the Web looks like: "We pass the savings onto you! [Just pay $29/year membership fee!]" (Seriously, though. 180W? That's not a ton of "help" for a typical refrigerator that draws anywhere between 300 and 800W.) (Also, seriously, though. Most apartment owners and condo HOAs won't allow their residents to put these on their balconies.)
- kotaKat 2mo agoThe costs just don't make sense to me given you can only produce a 'maximum' amount of solar power per year and thus will only have a theoretical max savings that might only amount to anywhere between $100-400/year depending on size and system, and some of the plug-in solar systems I've seen have been running upwards of $3000+. I know I can't justify spending $3k upfront to only offset $25/month at best. I'd rather just turn off a few lights and stop paying for Netflix. It seems like a large cost for not a lot of power offset that's also unusable when the power goes out (since you can't run untied from the grid).
- itsrobreally 2mo agoCan confirm, setup a couple hundred watts as a hobby project during the pandemic and built a battery pack - the biggest challenge (other than matching connectors) is finding anything other than just "charging devices" that the thing is practical for - until you get up around 1000W a lot of "normal" stuff is just too hungry.
- SyzygyRhythm 2mo agoThis just plugs into an outlet and offsets whatever usage you have, though. No need for a battery or matching load. It just subtracts 180 watts from your household usage. These types of devices are fairly popular in Germany, and maybe other places. For someone like me, with very high peak daytime prices, even a small offset would be valuable, but the full price here seems to be $500, which is too much. No reason it couldn't be much cheaper, though.
- phil21 2mo agoCall it 200W, and it would offset say 5 hours a day of that for where I'm at. Call it 1.5kwh for the entire day being optimistic. This would save me (inclusive of taxes, etc.) roughly $.33/day. Call it $10/mo. 34mo so payback isn't the worst I suppose. Better than I expected to be honest. Probably not worth the hassle factor though since I don't have an ideal place to put such a thing. I do have an "always on" load of well over 200W in my home, so at least it would offset every watt it generated. I'm not sure how true that is for most folks, as most folks don't run a home lab in their basement.
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- epistasis 2mo agoMost places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules. For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer: https://hub.utahcleanenergy.org/solar-power/for-policy-makers/solar-access-law/ https://hub.utahcleanenergy.org/solar-power/for-policy-maker...
- otterley 2mo ago> Most places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules. That claim is too vague to evaluate. > For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer: [link omitted] The referenced Utah legislation (SB154) does not prevent HOAs from banning balcony solar installations. It restricts only certain bans on rooftop solar installations on detached dwellings. It's important to read the fine print. The other legislation applies to restrictive deed covenants for new or renewed plats, not lease agreements. Even if they can't prevent condo owners from putting solar panels on their balcony, it doesn't prevent apartment owners from disallowing tenants from doing it. (Utah might have a different law covering that, I don't know.)
- mooreds 2mo agoAnyone here done this? Either with Brightsaver or another balcony solar system? What was your experience if so?
- jaysolarman 2mo agoI went with On Denmand Instant Solar. They ship very fast and have great customer service.
- jaysolarman 2mo agoI went with On demand Instant Solar. They are great and ship very fast,. The customer support is awesome.
- Spunkie 2mo agoI “installed” two APsystems EZ1-LV-NA microinverters at my house in Guatemala this year. It’s easy here because there is effectively zero regulation or monitoring by the power companies. It was stupidly simple. I laid four giant ~700 W panels flat on my upstairs patio, plugged the MC4 extension cables into the microinverters, and plugged the microinverter into a normal AC extension cord running to a wall outlet. After less than 10 minutes of fiddling with wires, I was generating power. Moving the giant solar panels was the part that actually took some effort. --------------------------- I’ve been following these types of systems for a long time, since before people started calling them plug-in or balcony solar. For the longest time, I thought they were just stupid. Paying a premium for an inverter that has lower input and output capacity than a string inverter, can’t be connected to batteries, and can’t generate power when the grid is down seemed obscene to me. To be honest, I still think they’re kind of dumb. Why can’t microinverters provide a DC tap so that I can also connect them to a battery system? All that said, as a middle-aged man who has now had to deal with electricians more than a few times, the appeal has become crystal clear. Microinverters basically exist because electricians as a whole are downright awful and rip everyone off.
- markvdb 2mo agoBy EU standards, that is expensive and low power for balcony power. It this US regulatory capture, China import rates, something else, all of the above?
- stuporglue 2mo agoIt might have to do with our 120V electrical standard. I know our kitchen kettles and irons are lower wattage than European ones. I miss how fast our German kettle heated water :-(
- thot_experiment 2mo agoJust for comparison buying solar panels off craigslist is about $0.20/watt.
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoCan you just plug the panel into an outlet?
- thot_experiment 2mo agoObviously not, but since the panels are >8x cheaper it's possible to buy 2x the capacity advertised here + an inverter for a one time cost of $200, so about $0.33/watt.
- a_ba 2mo agoThat seems crazy expensive. In Germany small-self install kits are quite popular. Hitting up amazon.de shows kits for around € 0.3/watt
- epistasis 2mo agoThe US has high tariffs on solar, batteries, and pretty much all the best and cheapest electricity generation technologies.
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- newtonianrules 2mo agoDoes any know how these kind of setups work for shared GFCI circuits? Like if I have a couple bathrooms on the same circuit as an outdoor GFCI plug I’d like to use with 1200 watts of panels, is that doable?
- futevolei 2mo agoThe devil is in the details of “a couple bathrooms”. Is it just led lights and ceiling fans? No problem, especially if it’s a 20A circuit. If for some reason you plug in a space heater and a hair dryer then you have issues. So you really to figure out what is/will be running to eliminate the risk of burning your house down.
- newtonianrules 2mo agoYeah that’s my worry. Curling iron, hair dryer, etc. Never more than one at a time though. Could I move the outdoor one to a separate breaker? Or would that require rewiring everything?
- futevolei 2mo agoYeah you can do that. I’m not an electrician, I was raised in a family with multiple union electricians though so I know enough to be dangerous. You would need a new “home run” cable from the outlet to your main panel and this assumes your panel has space for another breaker. Snaking that cable through and stapling it so there are no loose wires will probably require breaking drywall along the path. As for the existing wires, I think best case would be if the outside outlet was the last outlet in the circuit. Then you can just disconnect them from the plug and cap them off and label as abandoned. If it’s not the last outlet but rather in between then I think you need to snake new wire to reconnect the outlets on both sides directly but not sure.
- davidw 2mo agoHow does this work legally? I thought balcony solar was only legal in Utah in the US?
- nemomarx 2mo agohttps://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/states-passing-balcony-solar-laws https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/states-passing-ba... I think we're up to 8 states now?
- davidw 2mo agoOh that's good news. I wrote in to support HB4080 here in Oregon, but it didn't go anywhere during this year's short session, so will hopefully come back around for the session next year. It seems like the site ought to provide more clarity around that, though.
- walrus01 2mo agoThe marketing copy on this website looks very suspicious, from the point of view of somebody who actually knows solar systems.
- malfist 2mo agoThis is an ad. Just a straight up ad posted to HN and upvoted.
- Aurornis 2mo agoI don’t understand why this specific product is being upvoted. It’s not a good deal, it’s a very low power system, and it tries to get you to pay a subscription fee. This is an ad for a poor deal and I think some are upvoting before they click. I hope nobody buys it before doing some comparison shopping.
- epistasis 2mo agoEdit: and there it is, the post has been flagged, to be kept off the front page and suppressed from discovery. Most people in the US don't know that things like this even exist, so it's novel, new, and interesting. Our media environment and politics have kept us away from broad understanding of current technology and possibilities. The US also has Stockholm-syndrome levels of subservience to HOAs, too, for example. When it comes to clean energy, regulation is assumed to be impossible to change, as is the grid. (But when it comes to energy for data centers, all regulations can be changed, and boy will the grid undergo changes, all billed back to residential ratepayers...) It's hard to overstate just how bad the US is when it comes to the random person understanding hot-button Fox news topics like EVs and solar and wind and batteries.
- Aurornis 2mo agoIf you want to share information about balcony solar, submit a neutral link explaining it. Don’t submit an admit for a product that comes with a subscription.
- epistasis 2mo agoI don't want to submit information solar, I want to consume it, and in particular I'd like to know about this ad/sales page, whatever it is. HN is filled with commercial sales pitches, and even encourages self-promotion. I can't be certain why this one type of product suddenly gets people saying "no ads," but I have my suspicions.
- walrus01 2mo ago> Edit: and there it is, the post has been flagged, to be kept off the front page and suppressed from discovery. it wasn't flagged because of some nefarious plan to suppress people from knowing about this, it was flagged because it's marketing bullshit. There's lots of really good material out there about DIY solar and this isn't it.
- hettygreen 2mo agoIf this plugs into the house wiring through a single standard 120V plug, only half of the plugs in the house would ever draw energy from the solar panel. Household wiring actually has 2 separate 120V supply lines, out of phase with each other (This is how you can get 240V outlets (ovens, driers)). The 120V lines connect to only one of these two lines, and which one it connects to is determined by what slot the breaker is plugged into at the breaker box.
- OutOfHere 2mo agoThere is no need to subscribe to any solar power provision. You can buy and install the equipment yourself. If you need an electrician, make that a one-time expense.