Comment by pyrale 16 hours ago
A small addendum on the conclusions:
- every household, can do that, _if_ they have a roof. appartment buildings may not have enough roof for all the people in it.
- for those who can't access that, (that includes people, but also the industry, your mobile phone provider, etc.) prices will get worse.
- the fire brigade will love industrial-size battery fires in the neighbourhood.
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
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.
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.
You forgot to mention anybody who has a yard that gets full sun can mount panels there as well. As far as fires you can say same thing about all the fires that currently occur because of propane, gas, and heating oil. Those have become some engrained in society for so long that you don't even think of that as a "fire hazard therefore you shouldn't even have it".
Solar and renewables alone don't make a grid. You would also need grid-scale batteries, and the cost is not the same.
The "improvements" in power transmission is about building more lines, these lines are not going to be significantly cheaper to maintain than previous generations, and if these investment/maintenance costs are shared among less, that means more expensive electricity. Currently, in my country, electricity transport and distribution are about one third of total cost.
Germans seem to be rather fond of balcony solar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power