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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

>how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source?

We don't need a more plug and play system. A zero agreement interconnection for whatever UL certified 300W-ish scale is fine and should be widely deployed.

There needing to be interconnection agreements with your utility and an inspection is not a blocker that needs to be removed. Most places require a licensed electrician for complex work, having the electrician fill out a form and having a utility inspection is how things should be.

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Apologies if my reply here is not understanding you, but this is counter to my experience. Plenty of people still want to handle their own energy production even if they have grid access. I've built off-grid houses. Most of the utility production is already renewable. Many people still choose to live off grid even though that's the case. It would be epic if there was a plug and play, house-scale option because the cost of installation today is... epic (so epic in fact that the overall cost of install has actually gone up even though material costs have come down). Admittedly off-grid installs are a tiny fraction of places on the planet, but it's the trigger that led me to ask about this.

Perhaps you're just responding because I brought up grid tie (fair!), but I'm wondering why not aspire to remove the blocker, which would mean de-risking the installation so that laypeople could do it without having to get an electrician involved (which is what's so amazing about balcony).

If you want grid tie-in, a certified professional needs to be in the loop to verify all of the rules are being followed because incorrect setups are dangerous to other people. Also insurance probably doesn't want to insure your home if someone with questionable knowledge is setting up wiring and energy production.

Outside of cities, outside of grid tie, setting up your own micro-grid often can be done without any external intervention. You have to know things to do it though, I don't think it is a desirable state of things for just blind plug and play.

What you say is true, but do you not think there's a way to make it so that the risk is taken out of it so you can expand the number of people who are capable of doing the install? I mean, I personally think there is, but I respect you don't feel the same. I just end up with a $10,000 bill, for the labor, to do what seems to me like a very straightforward problem to solve.

It's not straightforward. If you do it wrong you kill people. Your house burns down, you burn your neighborhood down, you electrocute utility workers doing maintenance, you contribute to grid instability which is already a tight balancing act.

Can you make plug and play possible? Sure but you're just shifting the verification to a different layer and then you have to make it illegal to posses or sell any thing but the safe engineered products and you have to spend a bunch on enforcement to make sure only the safe stuff gets put in practice (not to mention replacing all the existing hardware and making it illegal to maintain)...

Modern consumer products and safety rules insulate people so much from the dangerous parts of existence that people get bothered when everything isn't like that and then want to go pet the big stripey orange and black kitty... not realizing that guardrails and safety nets aren't everywhere in existence.

And putting up those guardrails is EXPENSIVE. You want those instead of professional installation costs? Sure but the solar system you bought just got 10x as expensive as a result saving you nothing.

A house costs what... $250-500k to build these days? $10k for a major update to the build is nothing. Requiring expertise to verify dangerous things are done correctly is appropriate.

I'm 100% certain you can do it yourself.

We get Chinese solar panels here. $175 and produces 550 watt.

We then get Chinese MPTT inverters, always 2 if you run your fridge on it lol. $350 ish for one. The 5kW model. It's all one and the same.

You need a minimum of 3 panels.

So for less than $1000 you have 1.5 kWh with no storage.

Connecting the panels requires some care to ensure you stay within the parameters all GPTs know. Two pictures is all it takes. The spec label of your panel and that of your inverter.

I can't stress enough how easy it is.

The output of your inverter is 1 phase power. You can route that anywhere in your house safely since houses have.. circuits. So once the circuited is moved to the inverters grid, its seperated.. at the circuit breaker.

The scariest part was driving a screw through my roof.

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