‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
M in million should always be capitalised for this reason.
1.5M Germans vs 1.5m Germans
1.5m Germans are 150cm people !
In b4 nimbys complain it's an eyesore despite most people never looking up
Usually not uglier than the balcony itself.
“Plug-in solar is part of the whole array of options,”
I don't understand how this works? For our system we need an inverter that cost about $3000.- (half if it doesn't have to handle a battery), and it needs to be installed by an authorized electrician.
For a small system as the one shown, the price of panels are peanuts, the 2 panels shown should cost less than $150 combined. While the cost of inverter and getting it connected is way way higher. There's a lot more to this than not being on the roof!?! But which isn't disclosed.
The article says nothing about how the power from those panels is made usable.
The "balcony" bit isn't the defining characteristic, it shouldn't be taken literally. Some people do have their "balcony solar power" on their roofs.
What defines it is limitation to 800 W and inverters that come with a normal Euro Type F ("Schuko") plug and no legal requirement for professional installation. A layman can literally plug it in to an existing wall socket. Given that they are capped at 800 Watts, the inverters are also the simplest type and dirt cheap (although often they are literally just software-capped and identical to higher power ones, make of that what you will). Complete systems (2 panels, cabling, inverter) cost between 299€ and 800€ depending on quality. You genuinely only have to buy a fixture that suits your needs and a mate to help you install it.
Proper several-Kilowatt-systems are very expensive in Germany too.
Thanks really good info. 👍😀
A layman can literally plug it in to an existing wall socket
That's amazing, I had no idea that is possible??? Is that special for Germany? (sorry for keeping on with new questions). 😋 I've never heard of that option here in Denmark.
cost between 299€ and 800€
No wonder it's a popular option, our system is of course bigger with 11.2 kWh and 7.5 kWh battery. but it was $17000 1½ year ago. Prices have dropped to $12500 for a similar system, but still such an 800W system is dirt cheap by comparison.
Balcony solar is a set of diy technologies that require no utility permissions.
In Germany, NL, you can just plug it into socket and it works somehow.
In us you can use powerstations and also adapters that sync draw from battery as it charges from ac in house.
It pays for itself even with more expensive equipment, by not needed license, permission, that can lead to cheap efficient panels costing over 3$ per watt. Small systems that just offset use instead of selling back, have higher revenue offsets in high per kwh priced markets.
In Germany, NL, you can just plug it into socket and it works somehow.
This is incredibly dangerous as it will feed power into the grid even when the grid is down. You might say 'that is great!', yeah, well, the line technicians who cannot work on damaged cables because you are energizing them think otherwise.
One of the reasons home solar grid-feeding systems are expensive in the US is they have extra equipment to disconnect the system from the grid if the grid goes down. Your house can still have local power, but you won't be energizing powerlines technicians are trying to fix.
There are two main inverter approaches. One big inverter that takes the DC from a bunch of panels and converts it into AC and micro inverters where each panel gets it's own small one placed directly under the panel.
The micro inverters cost around $150 each. So you need around 10 panels before the single inverter becomes a good choice.
Installers love the micro because the install is easier. However as a owner with say 30 panels you now have 30 points of possible failure instead of the 1.
Oh boy, apparently there's a lot I don't know. It's really cool there are those cheaper options now.
Have a look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power
OK thanks, so they are indeed complete systems including inverter, so it can be connected to the grid.
I suppose they've made some cheap low power inverters then, but the power still needs to have stable voltage an frequency and synchronization. So I wonder how cheap it's possible to make?
I also suppose it still needs an authorized electrician to connect it? Unless Germany has some fancy system that is prepared for "plug in" connection of a local power source.
I wonder if a whole building could use one or two inverters?
I feel that'll make the cost reasonable
For apartment buildings I don't think that's possible, since electricity is a per household connection with separate meter.
If you pay 3000€ for an inverter then that's probably included installing and whatnot. You can get a cheap 50€ 4kW inverter on aliexpress, or an expensive 500€ 10kW one.
Home solar indicates a massive management failure of public utilities. If it is more cost effective and more pleasant to generate your own electricity without any economies of scale, something is very wrong.
Source: I live in California where the “public” utility is an absolute disaster that charges $.60-$.70/kW/hr so anybody who can afford the upfront cost of solar has done so.
Microgeneration makes way more sense to me. If you generate the power where it is used without pollution, we should. The unfortunate piece is we have to many landlords who's interest are too divorced from their tenets to put up more microgeneration
These microinverters aren’t made of fairy dust. Doing this stuff at utility scale uses a lot less nasty minerals and chemicals.
If you generate the power where it is used without pollution, we should.
Generators take space, require maintenance, and have a certain optimal capacity that isn't necessarily hit on a given roof.
For wind energy in particular, the bigger the turbine, the more yield per $ spent. If you go out to Corpus Christi you'll see these enormous turbines - $10M to $50M / ea - that generate on the order of $24 to $75 per MWh, or $.024-.075/kWh. Home wind/solar don't get anywhere close to that.
Prime placement of units, distribution across a wide area, and a degree of storage capacity means you're going to get better and more consistent yield.
Makes sense mathematically or you think makes sense?
Grids work on economies of scale. The bigger the better. Ask anyone who lives on an isolated island for their power bill. That's why it was such a big deal when the Baltics switched from the Russian grid to the EU one.
Bigger grid = more intertia&redundancy = less likelihood of failure, more options, lower costs.
Electricity isn't like chicken eggs. Transporting it is for all intents and purposes free. The network is expensive, but whether your house is pulling 1 A or 5 A is a non-difference to your utility. So to think local generation is "better" is a complete fallacy. Unless your house is fully disconnected from the network (not "net zero", disconnected) then it's not helping to generate power locally. Like someone else said, it's actually way more expensive per kWh than grid-scale solar.
Now this would all be a "you" problem, except the big problem with microgeneration is that current tech is "dumb". It's either pushing power on the network, or sometimes tripping if the voltage goes above 250V or so. Which actually happens in rich neighborhoods on very sunny days where everyone is pushing power.
What this means for the operators is that on very sunny days, they cannot do anything but account for the extra residential solar power. Which might mean they have to very quickly spin up or down alternative power generators which were not meant for this. Or they might be dealing with complex issues with current flowing the other way than designed and large voltage fluctuations on specific parts of the network that don't have the necessary infrastructure to "dump" that extra solar somewhere else.
The end result is that, counter-intuitively, microgeneration is one of the many failures of the neoliberal electricity market. It's more expensive and more disruptive for society than if those solar cells had been put to use in grid-scale solar production. They only end up where they are through political mismanagement and misaligned incentives (e.g. net metering which does not account for negative externalities).
Shoot, my electric is like $.0625/KWH
But there is also another 75-100 bucks tacked on as fees. Tempting to go solar and disconnect from the grid. Even without selling energy back to the grid, I would break even. (Savings over 20 years ~200 bucks)
The rent seekers making everything worse again
I live in an area where there is a monopoly of power supply by one of the worse polluters in American history, in a small area within a county there's an existing co-op power company that was basically grandfathered in because it's been in existence for so long while no other competitors are allowed in the area.
That co-op when I lived in the area was about half the cost of the monopoly company, a relative gets actually paid to be a member because they received their fathers account when he passed away and extra funds are distributed among all the members based on how long they've been with them (a little weird, but at least better than shareholders getting the profit).
You are absolutely right that the electric companies as a whole have failed, they've been allowed to amass too much influence and coverage while squashing any kind of competition. Why electrical needs aren't considered a national resource is mind baffling to me. Our country and citizens way of life would literally grind to a halt without it.
Infrastructure should be public, with regulated access for wholesale and retail. It works. The grid operator needs to make money for large scale projects like interconnectors, modernising, maintenance and build.
God, I love living in a nuclear plant evacuation zone
it's not actually that bad, unless you live next to a gen 1, or maybe gen 2 plant. Unless you're next to one of like, three existing operational RBMK plants.
By the time you needed to evacuate from that area due to a nuclear disaster, you would be well informed, and probably gone already. Even if you didn't the radiation exposure is likely to be incredibly minimal. Probably under the regulated limits.
That's 4' 11" - I had no idea Germans were so short.
I wonder why only those people have balcony solar. Why aren’t other Germans interested?
First the trans people come for my energy, then they come for my trains? When will the madness end? Won’t someone think of the children!
Nobody else found it odd that these solar installations are just flying away?
This is really nice! This is the future!
I'd love to know how much they produce, especially during the winter/monthly.
In the Northern hemisphere, in Winter the Sun is at a low angle, so vertically oriented panels might produce more. As an example, I have a sunroom and at Winter's Solstice the sunlight reaches about 3-4 meters into the room. At Summer's Solstice there is no direct sunlight in the room, as the Sun is overhead.
couple of things to note:
Do you have any numbers :-) ?
That kind of depends on what you're building. Standard is currently 800W (2 standard solar panels). Older models use 600W, other models are using 2000W and limit it to 800W. That doesn't make much sense, but skirts our local regulations that limits them to 800W, but of course generates more energy.
It then also depends on where you live. Can you point it to the sun? Do you live in sunny Spain or in northern Norway? In Germany a 800W system can produce 800-1200kWh per year. Our average electricity price is at 0.35€, so you'll save 280€-420€ a year. And those systems are dirt cheap, there are deals out there where you can get one for 200€. That is quite a good ROI for something that you can install in an hour.
If you want to know more, here is a calculator https://priwatt.de/service/ertragsrechner/
Yeah I get all that, but what if I need heating in the winter and have very low consumption in the summer? That is why I'm searching for real world numbers. If you give me some for a specific place then I can at least have a ballpark number if what I might get where I live.
OTOH as you say, they start to be so cheap it's almost impossible to go wrong...
not very much, especially during the winter, the best way to optimize panel production is by pointing it towards the sun most effectively, the farther north, or south, of the equator the less effective it is, the less directly it points towards the sun in general, the less power you make.
It might still produce a decent amount of power overall, through a reasonable period of time, but it's probably WELL below what you could be making with an optimized install, especially one with solar tracking, granted some solar power is still better than no solar power, so you do get tradeoffs at the end of the day.
as another commenter said, there are solar power calculators out there, if you're looking for rough figures, use them.
Read it as germans who are 1.5 meter tall, wondered why them being short is relevant.
i mean, it'll work. You should probably just collectively work together to install a solar array on the roof of the apartment instead, assuming it doesn't already have one.
Granted this is in the EU, so ideal solar tracking is kinda just, fucked. It matters more closer to the equator, because you can get significantly more power from pointing them correctly, and tracking, if you decide to use that.
Rooftop solar has a huge upfront cost and requires the building owner/operator do it. It’s out of the control of individuals and out of their price range.
Balcony solar is completely under your control, within most people’s budget, and you simply plug it in
While tracking might let you collect more energy, you also lose more of your balcony, and you’re back to making the install expensive and complicated. Not worth it
yeah and uh, idk if you noticed, generally more than one person lives in an apartment building, it's about as good as it's going to get unless you're installing solar from tax payer money, or utility company money.
While tracking might let you collect more energy, you also lose more of your balcony, and you’re back to making the install expensive and complicated. Not worth it
dont use tracking on a balcony??? Also not all tracking setups are expensive and complicated, the entire reason you would want to do them is to greatly increase the total amount of power production throughout the day, and you can very easily calculate the complexity cost, maintenance cost, and additional install cost over to the potential saved/produced value of the array post installation.
I mean if you're doing 2 axis tracking, sure it's probably more expensive, but one axis tracking is still reasonably effective, especially if you're in a decent spot and able to take advantage of it. The other option is installing more panels total, and when you're space limited, that's going to become a constraint.
any form of collective project requires organization, which conveniently is not required for an individual project that can be as impulsive and unsafe as the individual wants.
Balcony solar is not unsafe though. At least it is not more unsafe than say putting a plant pot on your balcony, or operating power appliances like fridges, stoves, washing machines...
that is true, but it's pretty common for apartment blocks to have some sort of management and front of house staff, so it's not impossible. Even easier to deal with if you're in some sort of co op situation.
Why are you cooking for yourself at home? It would be more efficient, if you organize a shared kitchen in the house and each evening a different party cooks for everyone in the house.
Hell yeah. I do Thursdays and man people remember to come to me on Thursday.
in an apartment specifically? Why would you build your own house when you can build a large building and then live in segmented housing blocks within that building?
It's literally just breaking the entire idea of apartment block housing for the purposes of providing less usable, less functional solar power. If you want to do your own install on top of an existing install on the apartment, go ahead, nobody is going to stop you, but you would see more returns if you managed to install solar directly on the roof of the building in the first place. Economy of scale is going to be advantageous for you in literally any case, that's just the truth.
Wait that’s a thing?
Holy shit that a thing!? That’s awesome!!
By putting the solar panel at a 90 degree angle though it is much less efficient than e.g. a 45 degree angle.
Less efficient than not having them?
Wrong question. The right question is: is the solar panel able to be CO2 neutral (at least) or CO2 negative. We don't get anything out of it if producing the solar panel costs more CO2 emissions than it saves by producing electricity.
Before you ask: I don't know the answer. I was looking into this thread in hope to find it.
I hung a solar panel vertically on my fence one time. It was facing west rather than south, but I was only getting about 3-4 watts on my 100 watt panel under the best conditions.
Depends, is an imaginary angle comparable to a 45 degree angle?
The most have a 45 degree angle
Might be most efficient when power is in higedt demands, in the morning and evenings when everyone is using power at home.
I can tell you I have a portable solar battery for emergencies and if I need to use it the right place for the panel is in my balcony, so this makes a ton of sense. In an apartment building roof space is relatively small per unit, but at least where I am every unit has a balcony. In my case even a rear-facing balcony that doesn't face the street but still gets sun for anywhere between 4-10 hours a day. If/when I am in a position to explore a solar installation this would be a good thing to look into.
That pic is great, haha. Woman looks so smug.
I am not sure 1.5m Germans all deciding on a single course of action is something to be happy about.
We have passed the torch of a fascist dystopia to another country.
During WW2, there were multiple
You have Trump now. It'd be our turn to make jokes, if we had any humour.
Nah, making fun of germans is always ok, especially now that at least 1 in 5 voters are voting for literal Nazis again in Germany.
Oh, German=Nazi reference, how original.
Nearly 100 years on time to move on and focus on the ones that carried it on I think
A mere drop in the bucket when 77m have decided on a much worse course of action in another country.
Isn't wind energy better on balconies?
Sadly really small wind turbines are really ineffective and not worth the investment until you have a really windy balcony. If you only have a few square meters solar is the only choice.
But I'd still love to have a small windmill in my garden.
If everyone puts wind turbines on the balconies they might end up blowing the building over
Hmm no,
If you're living more suburban and have a windy detached place to setup a small windturbine that's an option. On the garage or shed for example.
Doubt it. Wind around buildings tends to be shit.
There's a reason they build turbines on hilltops and out at sea.
My North-East facing balcony doesn't get enough sun light. But it's an interesting idea.
Would be nice if grid tied inverters weren’t such a regulatory PITA. Micro-deployment solar, and more importantly distributed energy storage, makes so much sense and could solve a lot of grid-related problems.
It's going to be hard to justify production costs, but in places that subsidize it: it makes perfect sense to scale up solar wherever possible.
Hard to justify costs? The article quotes 6 years of amortization. I know numbers around 8-10 years in Germany.
Show me any consumer investment, that gives such a good ROI.
8-10 years is a fully fledged pv system. The small balcony panels pay themselves after about 5 years, longer if you add a battery.
PRODUCTION COSTS.
It's assumed that the equivalent solar wouldn't be installed somewhere else, so you would need to produce more total to meet demand, meaning increased production costs with an upwards cost growth curve based on scale unless the materials, usually aluminum and slabs of silicon fresh out the oven or sometimes cadmium telluride, are already overabundant.
The actual problem are electricity prices rising higher and that shortens to time to reach the equilibrium between the investetment
This is great for people who live in the middling latitudes.
I'm sure this is a good thing, but considering the vast majority of Germans haven't figured out screens on windows I'm not sure the appeal to authority in the title has the desired effect.
"100 million smokers can't be wrong!"
This article is more than 1 month old
Oh no! Quick! To the incinerator!
The relentless march of sustainable cosplay continues. A million Germans clinging to plasticky solar trinkets like rosary beads against energy insecurity—how very on-brand for a nation that dismantled nuclear plants to cozy up with Putin’s pipelines. Nothing screams “green revolution” like propping up coal while bureaucrats hyperventilate over balcony wattage permits.
But sure, let’s pretend these glorified battery chargers absolve collective guilt. Social media’s latest performative ritual—slap a panel on your railing, flood Instagram with hashtags, ignore the 14-month waiting list for certified installers. Peak late-stage decarbonization theater: all aesthetics, no grid.
At least it’s honest. We’ve stopped pretending policy can fix anything. Why demand competent governance when you can DIY your dystopia?
Are you under the impression that the people buying solar for themselves are against sustainable energy solutions on a state level?
how very on-brand for a nation that dismantled nuclear plants to cozy up with Putin’s pipelines.
classic german meme, to be fair, they do actually have some pretty decent renewable production, they just really shot themselves in the foot while hiking up a mountain with that move.
Germany's energy transition is a masterclass in contradictions. Dismantling nuclear plants—clean, reliable, and efficient—only to lean on Russian gas and coal is not just shortsighted but self-sabotaging. The Energiewende, while ambitious, has exposed Germany to geopolitical vulnerabilities and grid instability. Renewable expansion is commendable but insufficient without robust infrastructure and energy storage.
The reliance on balcony solar panels and rooftop systems reeks of performative sustainability. These micro-solutions barely scratch the surface of Germany's energy needs yet are paraded as revolutionary. Meanwhile, bureaucratic inertia delays large-scale renewable projects.
The nuclear phase-out, driven by political expediency rather than pragmatism, left an energy vacuum filled by fossil fuels. A true green transition demands realism: embrace nuclear, bolster renewables, and stop romanticizing half-measures.
Germans also have 7 times the power bill
I blame Bavaria. If Germany had multiple price zones like other European countries instead of one giant one prices would plummet here in the north, while they'd explode in Bavaria. The state that does not want wind power, does want nuclear power, but already knows ahead of time that its geology (with lots of mountains and granite) is unsuitable for nuclear waste storage. Meanwhile, north German wind power and Scandinavian hydro dams complement each other perfectly. The Bavarians could do the same with the Austrians, they just don't. They want to eat cake and have it, too.
Am Bavarian can confirm. The CSU has been in power this state since forever. Especially old people just keep voting for them cause it's the way it always was. They had to form a coalition after the last elections. Their partner is essentially the exact same party but even more right wing. Not even kidding, I could not name a single area where they differ other than their main guy apparently handed out nazi newspapers in his younger years or smth. He blamed it on his brother and then the scandal just died off.
nb4 someone laughs at us Germans for pulling out of nuclear power: No, nuclear is not cheap. It's literally the most expensive way to generate electricity. Solar is cheap and better for the environment.
Nuclear is cheaper than your average electricity cost.
I know because I'm Swedish and you use us as your cheap electricity.
No, nuclear is not cheap. It’s literally the most expensive way to generate electricity
Source?
Beats coal anytime. Or Russian gas.
French electricity enters the chat.
Nuclear is reliable, predictable and stable 24/7 source. Solar not so much and possibly not that great for the environment if we don't figure out what to do with used solar panels. Also their production is not exactly clean. Whereas nuclear requires a wasted fuel storage somewhere and the fuel will eventually run out of radiation in some hundreds of thousands years.
Those small balcony systems pay for them here in Germany at ~35 Cents/kWh in a few months. Even if your power bill is 7x cheaper, they will pay for themselves easily.
For first few seconds, I deadass though they are talking about Germans with a height of 1,5 meters.
Only Germans this high have balcony solar
Makes sense, taller Germans throw too much of a shadow to make the solar worth it.
That was me.