That’s what I’m talking about! This needs to be everywhere. Funny though, my local utilities already has it marked on their agenda to “discuss” these types of solar setups. They say they “may not be safe to use.”
Actually the reality is that utility companies stand to lose money from tech like this. So hopefully my community and others can stand up for this tech.
Well they are correct to a point.
If the solar panel don’t have grid failure shutdown for its inverter, it can shock (or with bad luck) kill workers working on a downed power line assuming the load side is safe. That is also why house installations also often only have a dedicated outlet during power loss and are not allowed to connect to the full house.
I agree everyone should be able to get off-grid solar system or balcony solar, but they should have to be certified to not shock workers during an outage when people inevitably get cheap TEMU balcony solar.
This is what UL 3700 certification was developed to address.
Good points. I’ll also admit I have a fear of electricity so I’d totally be scared. But my local utilities are not saying this because they are worried about our well being, they are worried about making less money.
And panels are the cheap part. Going from expensive to cheap for a full solar setup is going to be battery > inverter > panels. So wouldn’t be surprised if some DIY people may consider skimping on inverters that can actually protect the grid.
I’m from Germany where as the article point out small solar installations are quite common e.g. on balconies, but while they are obviously vastly preferable compared to not having them, I still see them as somewhat of a sign for systematic failure.
There’s just no way it makes more sense for everyone to do some small installation with maybe even some batteries, instead of doing large scale deployments where efficiency of scale drives down cost and complexity.
The solution really should have been to involve people by doing large solar parks and giving people the ability (maybe subsidized) to purchase ownership shares. And through that letting them participate in the profits and gaining mind share.
We easily have the space for it. Roughly 20% of agricultural land is used for energy crops source, which is much less efficient and also worse for biodiversity, id you let stuff grow around/under solar panels.
Just take some of e.g. 750 million hectares used to plant rapeseed for biofuels and put solar on them. Rather than trying to do lots of small custom home installations.
Kind of an ad, but I wrote https://tiny-solar.space/ to help plan systems like this.
