In Germany on a south-facing balcony, producing your own electricity from solar panels is cheaper than the transmission costs of the power company. Meaning that even if the power company somehow had a too-cheap-to-meter fusion power plant, getting that electricity to you is more expensive than you making your own solar power.
Part of this is that transmission costs are higher in Germany than e.g. in the US, partially because Germany has a much more robust system with far fewer outages. How to structure these costs will likely become a bigger topic as more people produce their own electricity but still expect the grid to be there when they need it.
This is sort of my problem with pushing at-home solar as a primary means to de-carbonize our electricity production. We still need grid access, but with more people not getting their electricity from the grid, the cost to maintain it gets shifted to those who still use it as their primary source of energy. And, well, it's not the poor who are installing kilowatts worth of solar capacity and battery storage on their property.
Fewer outages vs US source? I work in the power industry in the US and I am sure this is regionally true but highly doubt it as a blanket statement.
If too many people go off-grid just enough to avoid paying their fair share, the costs get pushed onto those who can't generate their own power. Balancing that will be tricky.
I’ve been looking into doing this on my balcony in Spain. They sell “plug in” solar kits, but I’ve yet to determine if it’s actually legal here. I have a south facing balcony that’s about 1mx3m, so should be able to get about 400-600 watts of panels on the railing.
I actually came across this article in my research and it’s the only thing I’ve found saying it’s legal if it’s under 800w.
From what I’m gather it’s just a few solar panels and an inverter that feeds electricity into a socket, more or less.
My concern is what happens when there’s a power outage? I’d then be feeding power into a system that’s “denergized”. I know with real solar setups there’s an automatic cutoff when that happens to protect people working on the lines…all the kits i see here mention nothing about a cutoff system.
I live in Berlin, I have some friends that bought some panels just because they could. I'm considering myself even though I don't get a lot of sunlight on my balcony. I only pay about 60 euro per month. But these kits only cost a few hundred euros. So why not? If it saves me 10 euro per month or so, it would earn itself back in 3-4 years under ideal circumstances. It's not a huge saving obviously.
> My concern is what happens when there’s a power outage? I’d then be feeding power into a system that’s “denergized”.
This is Germany, they would have studied that topic thoroughly. In short, the certified inverter that you must use for this would indeed shut down in case of a power loss. This is usually called "anti-islanding protection" and not an optional feature for this.
Regarding legality: According to Commission Regulation EU 2016/631 systems under 800W don't qualify as any of the regulated types of power generating facilities, so any law that would limit their installation must be local.
In practice you need to have a two-way meter installed by the power company and you're good to go.
My understanding is that the inverter you get in the kit that you plug into the wall will shut itself off if the power goes out, the same as most larger non off-grid solar systems.
I've an EcoFlow plug & play inverter, and it automatically shuts off if the grid comes down. That's a requirement for all these devices.
Those are grid tie inverters, they cannot/will not output if no grid is present.
Maybe check the inverter specs or look for one explicitly listed as compliant with EU safety standards
The way power is shunted into the grid is very simple.The inverter you have senses the line voltage, and by keeping its voltage a tiny bit higher, "knows" that the power will flow out.
nothing to sense and push against and it will idle
likely doing an on and off test routine till if finds something to push against.
Vs an off grid inverter that is stand alone, and self referential. There are hybrid off/on grid inverters, but they will quickly stop sending current, without a reference voltage, and drop back to battery/solar.
As to legalities....,if there is no regulation adressing it, its legal, beurocracys hate that, but there it is. Its not like they wouldn't pin an
(unlikely) accident on you either way, so.....
and with no batteries, there is more risk in dropping the panel or another mechanical failure than anything electrical
I really wish we could remove the 100% tariffs on solar panels and EVs from China and let the free market do its thing. It feels like lobbying and red tape are the biggest things holding back the energy transition at this point.
[deleted]
Those are infuriating, whichever country is applying them. Either you're serious about making the transition happen or you're not.
We can’t do that. Those are subsidized. That’s completely unfair, unlike in the US, where you get a tax break for buying them.
/s
In the USA, given that the vast majority of apartments don't have to pay energy bills, this means they don't have an economic incentive to upgrade appliances, provide adequate insulation during construction, or maintain air seals. My old apartment, constructed in 2002, had dual pane glass, but it had LONG lost its air seals (very cheap 15 year warranty windows). There is zero chance the apartment was going to upgrade the 4000 windows in their complex.
This loophole is a major source of energy waste, and there's not a great way around it unless apartments are forced to bundle bulk energy costs with rent, which has other undesirable side effects.
I've rented 3 different apartments in the US. I always had to pay electricity myself. The water was included as part of the rent.
>In the USA, given that the vast majority of apartments don't have to pay energy bills, this means they don't have an economic incentive to upgrade appliances, provide adequate insulation during construction, or maintain air seals.
I don't understand this argument.
Someone is paying the bill (the owner), and they are also paying for maintaining air seals and upgrading appliances (you don't bring your own). Why don't you think there are economic incentives?
In fact, I'd argue there are greater incentives to do this for the building owner: greater scale and more efficiencies.
In principle, there is an incentive - renters should be picking apartment buildings which are more energy efficient. So buildings should be competing on this metric. But, in practice, renters have no reasonable way of knowing which buildings are more efficient. And buildings will not volunteer this information.
You could mandate buildings get an energy efficiency assessment. But I imagine that will go the way of carbon credits contracts and such - mostly lies.
The provider (landlord) and payer (tenant) being two distinct entities is part of the problem, but the other part is that the landlord actively hides that sort of information. If you ask how much water costs, they'll likely not answer, might throw out some fuzzy idea of it being normal, perhaps give you the rate per gallon, and definitely not tell you about the actively leaking pipe whose costs the tenants have to share or about the outdated appliances using 3x too much water. You don't learn about that till you're trapped in a lease, and the amount they're scamming you isn't usually worth the activation energy of taking legal action or moving.
My washer/dryer had to be replaced, and I was able to convince my landlord to split the additional cost of a heat-pump dryer. (The QoL improvement is great since there's no vent in the unit, though it's unclear if my energy bills are actually lower).
But he's just a single-unit condo landlord, and I'm a pretty good tenant, so we have a good relationship. I can't imagine a multi-unit corporation doing this.
So what it is just entirely free electricity? Someone must be paying for it somehow otherwise every apartment would be a bitcoin mine by now.
[deleted]
Wouldn't the property owner have an incentive?
Building more would likely help somewhat. If supply and demand are matched up, supply has to compete.
[deleted]
I've never heard of tenants not paying electric in the US. Water maybe but never electric.
> In the USA, given that the vast majority of apartments don't have to pay energy bills,
This is false.
[deleted]
The reading comprehension in response to this comment is atrocious. It's apartment complex /owners/ who aren't paying energy bills because their tenants are.
There is no such thing as "energy waste". You just use abundance of energy. It is like throwing money at a problem. If energy is available limitless, why would you care? Lucky americans. Poor germans.
> they are so popular the term Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant) has been coined
i woud argue that it is not how German works, word coining is not a metric of its popularity
It's like saying that the fact that the word "balcony power plant" exists is a sign of how popular it is in the English speaking world. Except that German compound words are seen as more legitimate because they lack the spaces and sound German.
Nah, any German word with Kraft in it, is a strong sign of it's popularity ;-)
Balkonkraftwerk sounds powerful. Not like Aufhängesolarpaneel, or Steckersolargerät.
[deleted]
>With solar balconies, no such consent is required unless the facade is listed as of historic interest or there is a specific prohibition from the residents’ association or the local authority.
In Australia, there is no chance you'd get away with this since basically every strata bylaw document bans non typical balcony furnature and its a struggle to just get those fake plant wall coverings or even hanging your clothes out to dry.
While that stance is about Spain, in Germany only a recent law change brought about by a petition has given balcony solar privileged status, making it harder for landlords to forbid them. Change is possible.
As far as I can tell from 5 min on Google, balcony solar is straight up banned in Australia. As in, there are no approved models or installers, and you can't DIY anything electrical without invalidating your home insurance.
A shame, because I'm renting a house, and while I'm obviously not going to invest in rooftop solar, a portable balcony setup I could take with me or easily sell the next time I move would be handy.
It was pretty cumbersome in Germany, too. Balcony solar is now considered the same as a satellite dish, which doesn't require special permission.
I think it is simple - electricity from solar panels is cheaper than electricity from the utility companies, which have been too slow to build out solar farms of their own, and it is fashionable to boot. ("Fashionable" is not exactly the word I want; I mean that it would be less popular with your friends and neighbors to operate a coal-fired generator on your balcony.)
This is impractical in the US as things currently stand; most utilities have a permitting process for a grid tie (anything that backfeeds the grid) and smartmeters are capable of detecting and reporting any backfeed.
Mostly the technical aspects are not a problem (most modern meters are two-way); you'd just need a policy like the one in Germany allowing de minimis backfeed.
If you are actually tying the solar-panel into your house's "grid" couldn't you also make additional mods between your electrical-panel and the meter to prevent backfeed?
Or, maybe an inline battery that the solar panel tops off.
> most modern meters are two-way
That said, people are generally using whatever meter came with their house, and few older meters were two-way. If you have an older meter and you start backfeeding the grid, you will end up paying for that electricity as if you had bought it off of the grid. The meter isn't smart enough to know which way the current is flowing, it only knows how much current is going past and assumes that all current flows into the house, not out.
Do you just hook up and inverter and run your electricity meter "in reverse" then? Is that how this works?
If you have an old analogue meter it will run in reverse, but this is illegal (you are reducing your metered usage of grid electricity, but the price of that includes grid transmission costs, taxes etc). The modern ones have a separate meter if you want to feed it to the grid, but it's not worth it, there are some fees for that so you'd end up with a few bucks every year.
So the way it works, you plug it in, and your appliances can use it and not the electricity from the grid. The excess you don't use gets fed in the grid, generally for free. You save basically on all the taxes, transmission costs etc, which are the majority of the price, if you use your own electricity. The more you can use, the more you will save.
If your home is fully solar powered and you are making more then you're using at the moment, then yes, the meter counts backwards.
Most of the time though, your production will be less than your consumption, so your meter will simply not count the watts you don't pull from the grid.
Digital non-smart meters don't run in reverse. Or at least mine doesn't.
I've ended up with three dumb meters: one main one, one that measures energy off the solar panels (used for feed-in-tariff), and one that measures heat pump consumption (which was a surprise of the installation, I think it was fitted for a subsidy that doesn't currently exist).
When the panels are backfeeding the main meter just puts a red LED on and stops counting. The solar installation is hardwired, not a balcony one.
initially yes but then the local power supplier will come and install a bidirectional meter
They are so popular in Germany, you can sometimes even buy them in supermarkets.
I assume Germany has 'the middle aisle' in Lidl and Aldi like we do in the UK? Solar panels are exactly the kind of thing I would expect to find there :D
We have them because our electricity is incredibly expensive and government regulation forbids anything bigger than that (at least if you want to do it yourself).
So how does this work, the solar panel is plugged into the flats electricity with no problems?
Is there an inverter that can add the power in, can it just be plugged into a normal socket.
The article seems to focus on the solar power aspect. What is preventing this from being done in the UK? There are very high safety standards for home electrics, I"m just curious as to how these are resolved.
The idea of nuclear in Australia is mostly just a con to keep coal going longer by the conservative side of politics. They are not currently in power and even if they do get elected this year market forces will basically scupper the plan in the medium term anyway.
It's 100% about their connections to the resources (coal) and oil & gas political donors, nothing to do with actual policy. At worst a few billions will go to politically connected people to keep some coal plants running a few more years, but I doubt any nuclear plants will actually pass any kind of business case because they will cost too much and take too long to build (we would have needed to start 25 years ago for them to be economically viable, so they could have replaced the coal plants while the renewables were being built out).
Australia is increasingly conservative when it comes to politics. We've had it too good for too long and so have lost the pioneering spirit.
Solar panels on homes are so popular that energy providers struggle to deal with the output during sunny days, whilst on the other hand solar and wind energy generation plants are looked at with suspicion and are politically unpopular.
Just look at the political reaction to the installation of the "biggest battery in the southern hemisphere" at the time. You'd expect politics to jump on it as advertising how progressive and advanced the country is. Nope, the prime Minister at the time mocked it (the same party proposing nine nuclear reactors): https://www.9news.com.au/national/sa-s-big-battery-just-anot...
Everyone agrees the Australian energy mix will involve lots of solar power. The coalition's policy [0] is keeping all the options open - just insistent that nuclear should be in the mix. And lifting the major legal impediments to developing nuclear power is just common sense, our policy on that has been insane for decades.
Although I don't want to be seen as defending the their overall plan. The part where they want the government to own a nuclear reactor is raw madness and it is hard to see how it'll come together as anything but an expensive disaster. Especially if the Labor party offers any resistance of any kind.
[0] https://www.australianeedsnuclear.org.au/our-plan
[UK here] It'd be great to have blanket permissions for 800W installs , but I've only a west facing two-story wall without a balcony. That probably needs permits and a small scaffolding tower rather than ladders moving your costs up and delaying your ROI :(
These seem like no-brainers for shade with solar generation compared to a traditional awning.
> With an outlay of €400-800 and with no installation cost, the panels could pay for themselves within six years
For what I’m paying PG&E, this would pay for itself in under a year.
What do you pay per kWh? With 800Wp you can expect a few hundred kWh/a.
Literally one month. JHC.
It's a great demonstration how cheap solar actually is. Last time I checked you can get two panels 800w total, inverter and basically everything you need for 500e or less, depending where you buy, and it's probably even cheaper now. If you want to put a larger installation on your roof, it's going to be 1500-2000 per kw, so easily 4x the actual hardware price, so most is just labour, permits etc. But even then it's worth it!
What an amazing invention.
Very interesting, I wasn't aware of "plug into the wall" solar provisioning solution that detects if the grid goes down, then it shuts itself down to mitigate the back-feed question, but that seems super easy.
Am I right seeing that power is 40 cents per kWh? Thats the 'incentive', I guess gas from Russia has been too volatile.
High grid energy prices + a cheap personal solar solution will significantly push innovation for residential electric efficiency.
More like 30 cents per kwh.
No more Russian gas.
Is this grid tied? Are people tying these to batteries and then running their appliances off of them? Seems like too little power to properly backfeed the grid.
You basically plug them into your power outlet and feed back into the system, reducing your electricity bill.
If it's a hybrid inverter, it just offsets what you pull from the grid. And btw, as long as you have the right voltage and grid-frequency, you can practically push as little as you want. The details and roadblocks usually come in the form of regulation, contracts, meter features, and the utilities trying to stonewall any sort of slow phase-out of people's dependence on them.
1.5 Million 400 watt modules ist Not nothing.
Yes they are grid tied.
Not sure if it is still running but in Berlin you got or get 500€ of your balcony solar installation bill payed back from the city.
Full solar cladding, at least on some sides, would be interesting, but I guess panel costs aren't quite there yet.
Solar seems to be hitting a lot of inflection points recently.
Colombia had 0.27GW total installed capacity as of the start of 2024.
In that year rooftop solar installed .215GW and utility scale installed 1.41GW
So just rooftop nearly doubled all solar installed ever in one year and utility more than 5x'd it
Well if you have just one solar panel you can double all installed solar in a matter of minutes and 5x it in matter of an hour.
Anyone doing this in America?
About six months ago I bought an Anker set - a portable battery pack and some folding panels. A buddy of mine got basically the same thing, but Ecoflow. He lives in a condo, has a balcony, and can hang his panels there to charge the pack; my options are a little more constrained (3 story house with a couple hundred sq ft concrete "yard", with light blocked most hours of the day by the next house.)
I haven't gotten much use out of my set, but his plan was to run his desktop off it, which sounded very doable. All in all probably not quite the same as Germany (I guess their kits don't need a battery or plug into the wall or something).
Not the part where they plug the panels into a wall outlet. In the US getting the permits for grid tie is a huge expense and hassle so it would make no sense to do it for just a couple of panels. You need permission not only from the local government, but the power company, and possibly an HOA.
If you did this you would buy some Bluetti or similar power bank to charge off of the panels and use that power to run lights or maybe a mini-split heat pump so you can launder your energy savings through not having to run your home's grid-tie heat pump as much.
To do exactly what they’re doing in Germany would be illegal, or perhaps merely would make your utility very mad. It’s something like an 800w inverter that plugs into a wall socket. One issue for the US is that you don’t have access to both hots on one plug in a typical receptacle. Not a dealbreaker but one of many reasons you shouldn't import a German one and try and modify it for US use.
Just in my van -> RV conversion. ;-)
It's actually a neat idea. So far solar has been a suburb only thing, but the balcony idea is great! Particularly in denser countries it has a lot of potential.
Won't denser areas have less sunlight ?
I think in Paris the issue is that because of rules protecting the aesthetics of buildings, you probably wouldn't be allowed to install those...
It also wouldn't work in the vast majority of corporate-controlled apartments in America for similar reasons. You aren't allow to fly flags or have decorations in most of these kind of units either, although this kind of rule tends to be selectively enforced.
The more people generate their own power, the less reliant cities are on centralized grids and big utilities
I'd have it too if it wasn't for these tall buildings around me.
surprised nobody is mentioning the huge downside of reduced indoor natural light with this option. i wonder if the mental health decrease is worth the monetary savings.
saves an average of 6-12 euro per month
Any chance these one day look better?
> there must be something in it
Subsidies.
I don't think most people buy balcony solar in Germany to save money. The eletricity you generate is very little, and it takes years before you even break even, and then you maybe save a couple of dozen euros a year. No, I think it's more about the feeling of independence and sustainability.
I have it on my balcony.
Took me a few hours to research and a helping hand to get it installed.
It will pay for itself in 4 years.
No subsidies.
And my balcony has a tree shadow at lunch.
It's just easy to do (plug it into the socket) and done.
400 watt module.
Today I made only 400 watt. Not a lot. It's still enough.
The energy price per kWh is just relatively high. 30-40cent
doesn't seem like subsidies so much as no regulatory roadblocks.
probably just buy up to 800w of panels, plug them into an outlet, and you're allowed.
Nah, solar panels have just gotten really cheap.
subsidies don't make products cheaper for the consumer, most of it lands in the pockets of companies.
This sounds like a nice idea but I would imagine either their electrical usage is _really_ low already or this is being given more praise than it deserves.
From the article, it seems like they're typically installing 2 - 300-watt solar panels. Most they can install is 800-watt without a certification.
Apartments here in the US, at least where I am, have a typical usage of 300 - 800 kW, which is a lot more than 800 watts.
Perhaps no A/C, using natural light more, fewer appliances attribute to a much lower monthly usage in Europe than they do in the US?
If you can do it, then do it but I don't think it would be as worthwhile here in the US.
*EDIT* I am likely thinking incorrectly on this. I am still skeptical of it being useful but not necessarily for that above.
I think your numbers are something different (maybe a usage of 300 - 800 kWh per month?)
My whole house peaks at about 3 kW but the average is between 500 W - 1200 W when heating or cooling, depending on the outside temperature. Right now the AC isn't on so the whole house is literally only pulling 120 W.
You can install a 800Wh installation without a certification.
Your monthly usage is 300 - 800 kWh.
In theory a 800Wh system can produce between 25kWh and 105kWh per month, depending on the location and month of the year.
> Apartments here in the US, at least where I am, have a typical usage of 300 - 800 kW, which is a lot more than 800 watts.
Isn’t this confusing usage with capacity? To compare them you have to multiply by efficiency and average sunlight hours.
Still likely doesn’t fully coverage the high end of that use but the set of apartment usage would certainly have some overlap with the set of generating capacity of 800 watt panels.
Are you sure it's not 3.3 - 8kW installations? Or maybe it's 300 - 800 kWh energy usage per month?
For comparison, Germany has 22kW capacity as standard for homes, and me in Indonesia gets by with AC, appliances, and 2.2kW car charging with a 5.5kW installation.
My entire house and car use about 950kWh per month!