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A comment on Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there must be something in it. Parent comment

Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by jakewins on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:07PM (#43005893)
Yes but they are saying you could - in a power outage - use just the panels, disconnecting them from the grid tie inverter and instead plugging them into a regular off grid charge-controller+battery+inverter setup.

That would cost a bit, but would let you use the same panels for emergency power

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by maxerickson on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:13PM (#43005984)
The inverter connects directly to the panel and has short DC leads.

Look at the "Component proximity" bit here:

https://robinsun.es/en/products/robinsun-performance-basic-b...

There's probably other setups, but I bet this is how most of the small, cheap ones work.

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by jakewins on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:19PM (#43006039)
I’ve not installed these balcony kits, but I’d be surprised if they used microinverters..

Either way, there is no issue using the panels in the kit you linked to in the way described; they are separate panels with standard MC4 connectors. Just unplug the inverter and plug in the grid forming one.

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by maxerickson on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:24PM (#43006074)
If you look in the menu, I've linked the setup that doesn't include any mounting hardware for the panels, but it's exactly the stuff that's used in the balcony kits.

We've move some distance away from toggling your transfer switch over to the battery charger. Just rewire all the panels, or put in relays at all the DC connections, or...

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Re:Balcony solar taking off: 1.5M Germans have them there mu... by jakewins on Monday February 10, 2025 @05:32PM (#43006154)
Huh, for some reason I assumed the balcony kits would be… “dumber”.

Either way, I’ve installed many panels with exactly these little boxes clipped to the back of them, and there is nice clean DC power to pull directly off the panel if you like by just disconnecting the inverter

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