I am not sure 1.5m Germans all deciding on a single course of action is something to be happy about.
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.
A mere drop in the bucket when 77m have decided on a much worse course of action in another country.
We have passed the torch of a fascist dystopia to another country.
During WW2, there were multiple
Why? Can you explain a little bit?
I am not sure if you are a student of history but twice before the Germans decided to go to war and have as their foe the world.
And how is that related to balcony solar?
We happily take the blame for WW2, but WW1 is on Austria!
It was a quote from Norm Macdonald, comedy - look it up if German search engines lower themselves with such humourous returns. The Germans are what they are, today they fought against appeasement and led a European announcement of greatly increased defense spending to support Ukraine and the world more widely, a difficult and noble decision. Filling the gap left as the US falls ever further into shame.
Don’t know about “happily”. “Readily” might be more accurate.
On second thought… yeah.
And does this have anything to do with generating power from solar panels on your own balcony?
*hurrdurr* Germany! Hitler! *hurrdurr*
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
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?
Read it as germans who are 1.5 meter tall, wondered why them being short is relevant.
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.
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.
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.
French electricity enters the chat.
French electricity leaves the chat in summer when their plants need to be shut down because the rivers are too warm or don’t carry enough water in the first place. And that’s nothing to say what they will do in the next decade years when a good portion of their reactors should be commissioned out.
No, nuclear is not cheap. It’s literally the most expensive way to generate electricity
Source?
Beats coal anytime. Or Russian gas.
I obviously don’t consider fossil fuels as an option. And I do doubt that it’s cheaper to build a nuclear plant compared do building a coal or gas fired one.
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.
Storing something extremely dangerous extremely safely for “some hundreds of thousands of years” doesn’t exactly sound cheap, does it?
Not that expensive either. And that’s already included in the energy price. Also volume is magnitudes smaller than used solar panels.
“100 million smokers can’t be wrong!”
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.
The actual problem are electricity prices rising higher and that shortens to time to reach the equilibrium between the investetment
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.
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.
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.
For first few seconds, I deadass though they are talking about Germans with a height of 1,5 meters.
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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.
So why won’t taller Germans get solar? I don’t even see the connection to height… Oh, maybe they hit their heads on the panels? No, that doesn’t seem likely… I don’t get it.
That pic is great, haha. Woman looks so smug.
My dumb ass: “Is it just 1.5m Germans, or other heights too?”
1.5m Germans are 150cm people !
M in million should always be capitalised for this reason.
1.5M Germans vs 1.5m Germans
1.5 10^6 Germans vs 1.5 10^-3 Germans
Until I read this comment I was 100% certain the post was about short Germans somehow preferring having their balconies occluded by taller-than-them solar panels.
Maybe they’re also nudists, or otherwise like their privacy
Megagermans vs milligermans
Megagermans just sound evil.
And milligermans, well there’s a vaccine against that I think.
This me me lol. Thank you 😂
This is really nice! This is the future!
I’d love to know how much they produce, especially during the winter/monthly.
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…
That won’t really work as that is the worst scenario for solar. I can give you real world data from southern germany. I don’t have balcony solar, but a 13,4kWp solar system on my roof. Here is the data from this year:
As you can see, days are getting longer in Feb, generation is going up. To get a rough estimate, take my data and divide it by 16,75. That won’t give you a lot of heating, esp. with a normal space heater. Even if you had a scenario, where your 800W solar system would produce 800W in the winter, your space heater will suck 2000W. Take a look at its power cord, you’ll see how much it uses.
So yeah, 800W is not much, but will cover your running appliances like your fridge, freezer, router or computer on sunny days.
Hey thank you! I’m definitely saving this off for my future calculations!
You’re totally correct about the rest, and I’m now able to roughly see if I should buy a 800 system or two, or theee… Electric hookups included in the calculation of course.
Be careful there - you’re pushing electricity in your grid and there is a reason why only one system is permitted in Germany. Don’t hook up two or three without talking with an expert.
Thank you for your concern, I surre will not do anything crazy without knowing what I’m doing :-)
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.
Do you have any numbers :-) ?
I have a sunroom, what sort of numbers are you asking for? It’s a partly cloudy day, about 22C in the room, without heat. And about 7C outside.
Nice numbers <3
couple of things to note:
- Not every balcony is southern facing
- Most older European homes don’t have A/C yet, so electrical costs are more during the winter months (that trend will change though I imagine)
- I think the numbers @Valmond@lemmy.world was asking about involved power output, that of course depends on the size of your array, daily/monthly/yearly differences in weather, and all sorts of little nuances that’s hard to say without averaging out years worth of data.
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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.
Thanks for the input, but I yet have to find a calculator that shows how much you generate per month and not only oer year!
im pretty sure most of the will do a yearly breakout over the months? A really big reason to use them is to figure out maximum and minimum production throughout the year, so idk what calculator you’re using, but any good ones should be able to calculate that.
I’ve used PVwatts before, and it does spit out monthly data, though it can also bring in some more complex data, it’s a whole field of research, and it’s worth investing time into if you’re curious about it.
Hey thank you! I re-checked out PVwatts (the link was used ☺️I probably avoided it because you have to put your address in, I don’t want calls etc. Turns out the city is enough) it’s exactly what I needed, thanks!
it requires you to put in your address to locate your lat and long so it can properly calculate your energy production, especially throughout the year. It may still do some tracking on that, but it’s unlikely to be anything significant unless you have an account and money tied to it somehow.
But yes, a place close by you will work just as fine. Though you can expect some level of inaccuracy, it’s probably not that significant if you’re reasonably close.
Yes and thanks again, there are soo many crap sites out there I just gave up!
This is great for people who live in the middling latitudes.
By putting the solar panel at a 90 degree angle though it is much less efficient than e.g. a 45 degree angle.
The most have a 45 degree angle
Less efficient than not having them?
Depends, is an imaginary angle comparable to a 45 degree angle?
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.
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.
Most people don’t care about being CO2 neutral. The real question is what is the ROI? Will the panel save that person money. If it takes 50 years to pay for itself, I’d say that’s bad. 10 years is more standard. 5 years I say it’s a no brainer. Though I suppose you can also argue value for utility, if that is giving her the ability to power something off grid that would be worth something.
In Germany those panels usually pay themselves after about 5 years depending on the price of the necessary electronics (don’t forget the electricity meter!) and if there’s also a battery.
You don’t need a smart meter for this, just plug and play. If seen offers for complete sets from as low as 250€ in supermarkets, so almost everyone can get one and start saving some power.
To be a positive impact, they just need to be less carbon intensive thans the energy they displace. According to the first results on google, (presumably utility-scale) solar is about 12 times less carbon intensive than natural gas and 20 times compared to coal. So as long as you’re replacing base load and not utility solar, balcony solar could be as much as 10 times less efficient and still come out a net positive.
Keep in mind also that these numbers keep improving as solar panel manufacturing becomes more efficient and starts using more green energy itself over the coming decades
Might be most efficient when power is in higedt demands, in the morning and evenings when everyone is using power at home.
Isn’t wind energy better on balconies?
Doubt it. Wind around buildings tends to be shit.
There’s a reason they build turbines on hilltops and out at sea.
Hmm no,
- first oft all: noise. Wind turbines have moving parts, that attached to a building or even worse attached to a balcony creates noise in the whole building. Imagine the rattling of 5-6 ~10 year old, bad maintained, wind turbines.
- Second: the energy output is rather low. A 1,2KW turbine is about 1.2m/3.9feet big. That’s in spherical, cause it has to be able to rotate by wind direction.
- Third: balconies are preferred to not have wind, but sun.
- And last but not least: blades. Every windturbine form factor has (fast) moving blades. If it’s reachable someone is going to stick a finger in it.
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.
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
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.
Like fly screens?
Becausr in that case I don’t get it.Maybe he/she refers to the operating system from Microsoft?
But what screens does he/she mean? Lock screen? Desktop? screensaver??
Very weird.I have to guess as anyone but I would say screen as in display/monitor. It must be hardware related.
What screens are you talking about?
We have fly screens in our windows. Windows which can be tilted btw.
You also have the best shutters ever.
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.
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.
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.
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…
the electricity can be unsafe, such as if you just teist wires together and don’t bother covering them.
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.
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.
