Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

40 pointsposted a year ago
by andsoitis
(grist.org)

10 Comments

terom

a year ago

These are technically kinda crazy, because they use a normal schuko plug (with male pins) to output power. It allows loading the circuit with a higher total ampacity than the circuit breaker protecting the wiring at the distribution panel. It takes a very specific set of regulations to make these legal, and those don't apply elsewhere in Europe.

https://www.vde.com/de/fnn/themen/tar/tar-niederspannung/erz...

https://tukes.fi/-/ala-kayta-pistorasiaan-kytkettavaa-aurink... Finnish national authority says: NO

grecy

a year ago

Brilliant. About a five year payback period, similar to a larger rooftop setup. I look forward to a future where every outdoor surface is made of solar panels .

Tarsul

a year ago

yeah it's nice but if you rent, most owners forbid putting it on the railing (e.g. because it could fall down).

nine_k

a year ago

The landlords may install such panels, and pocket the savings / profit from generation.

BTW from my back-of-envelope calculations, the panels are the cheapest part, the inverter / charger costs more, and batteries to sustain several hours of load, even more.

7373737373

a year ago

I still don't understand why landlords (especially big corporations with tens or even hundreds of thousands of apartment buildings, garages and parking spaces) don't make use of the huge roof area they have.

nine_k

a year ago

Some of them do, even here in NYC. A quick look on Google maps e.g. over roofs of Brooklyn, where buildings are much lower and roofs are wide, shows a large amount of solar panels on more flat buildings, like stores, warehouses, or hospitals. Sometimes I notice installations on roofs of 3-5-story buildings just while walking around.

But many apartment buildings (here) are too tall for the roof to capture enough energy, and mounting solar panels on walls is both not very efficient (because of the light's incident angle) and much harder.

positr0n

a year ago

How does the height affect the energy captured? Or are you meaning the steepness of the roof?

nine_k

a year ago

In a tall building, you have more floors that house energy consumers, for the same amount of the roof space. This means that the energy captured offsets a smaller share of the electricity consumed by the building, and the complexity may not be worth it. Usually roofs of tall buildings are already crowded with radiators of HVAC systems.