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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

Germans seem to be rather fond of balcony solar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power

Balcony solar is absolute awesome in germany. I get about 30% return on investment per year on my small solar panel. Hard not to do it. I have no idea why it is still a little niche

For some reason in the USA there is only a single state that has approved that (Utah).

It conflicts with some of the NEC (national electric code) requirements. That all needs to get sorted out.

The NEC is also in conflict with homeowners performing simple electrical work, such as replacing switches and outlets.

It is. But in this case the conflict is more fundamental - the NEC has no provision for a circuit that has multiple electrical supplies.

If you have a circuit rated for 15 amps, and plug in 12 amps of solar, then the breaker won't trip until the circuit load exceeds 27 amps, which seems bad.

Hmm, if you have an appliance (like a clothes dryer) with a dedicated circuit, it seems like you could solve this by connecting there. If you have the balcony solar device plug into the wall and the appliance plug into the balcony solar device, then you can easily put an additional circuit breaker where it's needed.

Not all homeowners are built for even these simple tasks. I watched someone try to replace a receptacle live, all while wondering why it was arcing and tripping the breaker repeatedly.

My solution would be using trade schools to run a homeowner electrician's program, teaching folks basic safety, measurement, and mechanics of what they would need do the work safely.

A program like this shouldn't take more than a weekend to cover all the issues including a Hands-On lab. A second weekend could be added for ground mounted solar setups.

I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks get such a ticket.

Uhhh...how long exactly did you "watch" this?

Lol I can't recall, but I think eventually they gave up trying to restore power until it was finished. Perhaps they found a flashlight.

Did something change? Iirc you can do that sort of job yourself.

That's just low hanging fruit, the easiest and cheapest way to produce some solar power. But even if fully utilized, that is not going to come anywhere close to meeting most households' needs.

No, but I'm on a TOU plan where electricity costs me more from 4-8pm, and I get direct afternoon sun. If balcony solar could halve the electricity usage of my AC from like 2-6 in the summer, that would be pretty nice.

Solar and AC are indeed a match made in heaven.

That's an interesting way to word "the most efficient way". A solar setup that meets the energy needs of the entire household is going to have to be oversized, which is a waste. Meanwhile, 100% of the output of balcony solar is almost always going to be fully utilized by the household, meaning 100% of your investment goes into lowering your ever-rising electricity bill.

Any time you're exporting to the grid, you're losing out - the rates are never good. Check out the OP's graph. His setup is oversized by about 2x. He's exporting to the grid for most of the day, which is hardly useful, then pulling from the grid after 6pm - the worst of both worlds. Downsizing the solar setup 2x and investing that into batteries would be much better.

> your ever-rising electricity bill.

It's not a surprise that your bill is rising if people consume less during the day because they install balcony solar, but don't meaningfully change their peak consumption, and therefore, don't meaningfully reduce the grid investment required.

At least the blog's author has a battery setup which meaningfully moves their peak draw.

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