Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there must be something in it

Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by jillesvangurp on Monday February 10, 2025 @04:42PM (#43005565)

I live in Berlin, I have some friends that bought some panels just because they could. I'm considering myself even though I don't get a lot of sunlight on my balcony. I only pay about 60 euro per month. But these kits only cost a few hundred euros. So why not? If it saves me 10 euro per month or so, it would earn itself back in 3-4 years under ideal circumstances. It's not a huge saving obviously.

> My concern is what happens when there’s a power outage? I’d then be feeding power into a system that’s “denergized”.

This is Germany, they would have studied that topic thoroughly. In short, the certified inverter that you must use for this would indeed shut down in case of a power loss. This is usually called "anti-islanding protection" and not an optional feature for this.

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by stadeschuldt on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:12PM (#43005970)

In Berlin, you could get it for free through the SolarPLUS[1] subsidy program. My setup (2 panels, inverter and mounts) cost less than 500€ and was fully subsidized.

[1] https://www.ibb-business-team.de/en/solarplus/

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by carlosjobim on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:08PM (#43005901)

Ask yourself why you are interested in an investment that has only meager returns if everything works out well? Is it worth your time thinking about +/- €10 per month? If that's the case, you could probably achieve it just by using a little less electricity.

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by tbossanova on Monday February 10, 2025 @10:20PM (#43008558)

Or do both?

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by oezi on Tuesday February 11, 2025 @02:17AM (#43009930)

This is very much a fire and forget thing. Install takes 2 hours and then generates electricity for years.

Electricity is rather cheap anyway. If you don't heat/cool water or the house with it, electricity cost in Germany is less than 100 EUR per month for a family of 4.

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by te0006 on Tuesday February 11, 2025 @02:18AM (#43009941)

Interestingly, owning even a small PV setup like these "balcony solar" devices, and monitoring its output, causes many people to think more about their grid power consumption, and to reduce it or adapt their usage pattern to solar energy availability to some extent. There is something like gamification going on.

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by Jalad on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:18PM (#43006023)

> But these kits only cost a few hundred euros. So why not? If it saves me 10 euro per month or so, it would earn itself back in 3-4 years under ideal circumstances

I'm not saying this is an unreasonable position, but the net present value of an investment that pays 10 euros a month for 4 years is also a couple of hundred euros. So in the end it might be a wash (or might not beat out investing in higher yield projects)

https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/financial/present...

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