If labor costs keep going up, it seems like the right path for the industry is to simplify installation more so it becomes more DIY. More plug-and-play. Less skilled carpenters and electricians.
I know some people here Germany that have picked up some panels at their local Aldi and are using them. Yields are pretty anemic but they aren't that expensive either. Kind of cool that Germany is encouraging this.
Waiting for a (mass-)manufacturer to build one with a 48VDC input that anyone can self-install a solar panel and plug-in but switches to a mains-fed 48VDC source as required.
Doesn’t need a battery (the fridge/freezer is one!), gets you some operation during outages, no license required to wire up. Takes advantage of whatever solar is available during the daytime without really wasting any.
Would also love a non-permanently installed doohickey that doesn’t require an electrician to legally install that will gladly push solar into a power strip and handle all the intertie stuff itself.
It shouldn’t be a “whole house or nothing” and a “completely islanded circuit or nothing” dilemma when wanting to partly solarize something. Which I guess Germany has allowed but regulations a big impediment in most places.
Genuinely curious - when did this become a thing? I have a couple of relatively recent fridges (less than 10 yrs old, and same model still sold today) that constantly cycle on/off, and spend more time off than they do on.
I'd imagine a variable speed system (like are available in inverter-based heat pumps today) could be designed to run nearly constantly, but the variability of things like room temp, fridge loading (empty fridges are less efficient than full ones), open/closing doors, and the addition of warm/hot things in the fridge would make it so there's always a need for cycling at some level...
And yeah, at least the fan turns off when you open the door, and I’d imagine if you put a bunch of ice into the fridge, it wouldn’t need to run at all for a while.
Meanwhile my local electric code (Ontario Canada) still requires a dedicated circuit for the fridge, which will now basically hum along at 1-2amps and never brownout/trip a circuit. What a waste.
I kinda wonder how low or high voltage it could run on out-of-the-box but there might be other stuff that runs off straight 120V (e.g. defrost cycle).
One of the problems for residential roof-mounted systems is the wind load that large flat panels introduce. This load needs to be offset with very strong roof penetrations. You need to drive large bolts directly into the trusses of the roof which requires a bit of expertise, and has risks if you knick the edge of a piece of structural timber.
Contrast this with the round tubes used by solar thermal that don't introduce large wind loads, and nearly any DIYer can drill holes in their roof to support them.
Similarly, most solar installations on steeper roofs here in Germany are either made without penetrations at all (by hooking special frames into the roof structure under the roof tiles), or they use very basic screws that tie into the existing roof structure. Our neighbor did his solar installation himself on a pretty steep roof, something you would absolutely not do if there were any risk of structural damage.