If 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".

Solakon One has a quite decent API you can control without cloud being involved...

I 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.

Drill baby drill...

There 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"

Virginia recently became the 2nd state to allow it.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/virginia-to-becom...

Solar panels were expensive and not very efficient then.

Lobby from the other people selling energy: the not green type. They have the money, the lawyers, the ads, everything. Balcony solar power is only allowed now due to energy shortage.

We did invest, starting in the 1970s, which is what brought the prices down so much. It just took time to get the R&D to the point where they were cost competitive.

The social problem is that fossil fuel usage was very profitable and employed enough people that polluters were allowed not to pay for externalities and a lot of climate change denial funded by the oil companies proved effective at getting politicians and the public to downplay the risk. Even today, even on HN, you can find people who’ll say it’s no big deal, the earth has been this warm in the past, that it’ll cost too much, that they can never drive an EV because their daily commute is 11 hours each way without stopping, etc.

Because fossil fuel lobbyists so successfully captured most right-wing parties, millions of people added that to their self identity and thus will struggle to admit they were wrong because that more or less means admitting that the same people who lied to them about the climate also lied about other things.

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"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

Neither the title nor the article implied so.

What '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)

You 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/2024-0...

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.

Fortunately they do, and in fact the article makes that clear. +1 for reading to the end of the paragraph that was quoted.

Yes. 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.

I 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?