Germany Outfitted Half a Million Balconies with Solar Panels
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Germany has seen a surge in balcony solar panels, with over half a million installed, sparking debate about their effectiveness, safety, and the role of government policy in promoting decentralized energy production.
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I'm frankly still not sure what you're trying to say even if I understand the sentence now, e.g.: what free storage?! Isn't germany's projected storage capacity by 2050 somewhere between negligible and tiny?
But when you have it the marginal cost of an extra cycle is very low.
Germany’s battery storage-related grid connection requests swell beyond 500 GW
https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage...
These storage systems are generally warrantied as 5000-10000 cycles with 85% capacity remaining in 20 years time.
Guaranteed money today is better than saving a few cycles to maybe make money in 20 years time. Now also factor in discounting the risk etc. and the calculation is given.
But the business case is of course calculated on having the entire construction cost be amortized with profit over a chosen period. With some days making more money than other.
What batteries do are extending the time renewables flood the grid with cheap electricity and thus force nuclear reactors to throttle down, gas peakers to shut down etc.
Or these thermal plants can bid negative ensuring they don’t have to turn off while hurrying on their own demise.
But that fully relies on storage. The person you were responding to was asking whether small-scale solar panels make sense. As it is, during those hours where your solar panel is most effective, you can sign up to receive money for drawing electricity from the grid (if prices are negative enough that it outbids even the transportation costs and taxes). Having a solar panel at that time... you might as well turn it off and get a price that's better than free. Storage would be what we need much more urgently than an extra 800Wp solar per household, then we could already turn off those coal plants for probably weeks at a time during summer
The next step is coal plants forced to become peakers thermally cycling daily because they are loosing too much.
As seen in for example Australia:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...
The next step is being a reserve plant only activated seasonally.
Finally rounding off with purely being a reserve plant and then decommissioning when it costs too much to even keep it runnable.
And instead they make you a bunch of money a bog standard autumn day because the French and Swedish nuclear power decided to crap out.
https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy
> 3) (medium term) The world-conquering dream is for our PV-based steam to replace fossil-generated steam at conventional power plants. That will let us feed electricity back into the grid using otherwise stranded generating assets (e.g. a coal plant). You might see this as a way to combine an existing, uncompetitive coal plant with thermal energy storage and captive renewables to give it economics more similar to a natural gas power plant.
See also: "Thermal Energy Storage in Dirt for Repowering Decommissioned Coal Plants" (although I believe this assumes the storage is using power from the grid):
https://findingspress.org/article/141340-thermal-energy-stor...
Contrast this with the case of listening to music on my stereo: if I listen to 5% more music on the stereo, I don't have to buy 5% more music, and I don't have to replace the stereo 5% sooner. The marginal cost is near zero: just the small amount of electricity the stereo uses, plus a tiny amount of wear and tear. Maybe I only listen to music three hours a week and the stereo cost me $313 and lasts for 20 years, so the average cost per hour is $0.10. But the marginal cost of listening for an additional hour this week is much lower than that.
Utility-scale batteries are more like the stereo than the food.
At the moment (spring) in half-decent weather all the above stuff is 100% off-grid. I'm still using grid power for hot water heating, dish washer, clothes washer -- all of which I do for free in my daily "Free Hour of Power" -- and for intermittent incidentals such as the water pump (e.g. runs for 15 seconds when I flush the toilet) and lighting in usually non-occupied rooms such as toilet, bathroom, and bedroom -- which together means I'm paying around 10c-20c per day over and above the fixed daily charge.
300 Euros crappy setup, 600 euros mid-range setup, 1200 with storage. (Extra) regulations is zilch, it's legal to plug and play these things up to 800W nameplate capacity.
I went with numbers for mid-range, vertical south orientation and offsetting 200W (without battery, any overproduction is wasted). This nets you an avarage of €0.32 per day - With practically nothing in winter, and maybe up to €1 per day on a PARTICULARLY nice summer day.
But altogether, that still adds up to something like Eur 116 per year, so your midrange system earns itself back in 5-6 years.
Not great, not terrible. Nothing to write home about, but free money is free money.
- 4x Hyundai 435W Solar Panels @ 167$ each for $670 total
- 1x EcoFlow Stream Microinverter for $257.
- Various cables, MC4 crimping kit, etc.. about $150
Grand total was $1077, I set them in direct sun on my patio and have generated 6-8kWh per day. At Utah energy prices (0.12 where I live), they will pay off in about 4 years. Somewhere like California with 4x the energy prices as here, it would probably pay for itself in <1 year.
> installing a couple of 300-watt panels will give savings of up to 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill, but there are lots of variables that come with that claim. It depends on which direction the balcony faces and whether the panels are shaded part of the day.
My german electricity bill is around 1200 euros a year. Sign me up for a one-time purchase of 426€ to save ~360€ every year if I had optimal conditions -- call it 50% effective and it's still earned back in under 3 years. The thing lasts, what, a decade? More?
(Price taken from https://kleineskraftwerk.de/products/kleines-kraftwerk-gitte... for 450W, first one I could find from some review site.)
Edit: figure corrected for not using the tax rebate that it apparently advertised with
And they dont matter. This is strictly worth it in every scenario when energy production is not already solar.
I'm in the US, and over here we also have some other complicating factors (here we have 2 sets of breakers that are 180 degrees out of phase and so the solar panels can only feed into one half of the breakers without extra complications. I only sort of understand this, someone else can explain better), so solar panels plugged into the balcony that don't backfeed straight to the grid can only cover a subset of the usage. In Germany you have 240v power so I would assume you would hit payoff very quickly.
I'll find a way to prop them up at 50º for winter when the time comes for that (April or May), though that's for sunny conditions. In our typical overcast in winter flat on the ground is probably still fine to catch the most diffuse light. I'll experiment when the time comes.
This kind of thing just knocks the edges off of production and transmission costs. You get to the point where you're not trying to squeeze peak efficiency any more and you're just trying to fill in spaces wherever works reasonably well.
Percent-wise I'd guess it's less than 10% of yearly total?
Overall it's OK payback, but mostly penny pinching in grand scheme of things.
https://globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=48.886392,9.470215,6&s=5...
It's better to get power at a useful time, even if that means the panel only generates half as much as it could, because storage costs far more than panels.
They also kinda look terrible :(
> Once in place, people simply plug a micro-inverter into an available wall outlet.
later
>Gründinger and experts at the German Solar Industry Association noted that the devices don’t generate enough power to strain the grid, and their standardized design and safety features allow them to integrate into balconies smoothly and easily.
This seem to talk to the safety of the grid and the balcony. What is done when electricians power down the apartment or worse, the building to work on something? The wires remain energized despite proper distribution panel shut down. Do these setups have auto shut off if they see no other power on the plug they are on? what if it is the building, wouldn't other panels still energize the wires, so they would not shut down? Just asking, as my personal experience is quite hair raising and crispy when it comes to inappropriately de-energized circuits. ;)
This is a newbie question, and I look forward to learning how it's more complex than this.
Simple grid-tied microinverters are completely incapable of doing anything without a grid to work with, and this is necessary: A non-synchronized AC generation source can't survive long before becoming an expensive puff of smoke instead.
Anti-islanding is an actual feature that is also inherent in the design of grid-tied inverters: When there is nothing for them to sync to, they output nothing.
However, there’s a problem in addition to electrocuting utility workers (the ones around here assume islanding during outages, so that’s less of an issue now).
Say you plug the microinverter into a 16A 120V outlet in the US, and the power goes out while you’re running a 240V 40A clothes dryer. The island is definitely going to collapse at that point, and might do bad stuff on the way down.
What problem (or solution) is the concern, here?
Yes. This is Germany we are talking here. I doubt any other country has higher (and more annoying) safety standards.
https://www.heise.de/news/RelayGate-Deye-Solar-Microinverter...
They only had a software implementation and were forced to send all customers in Germany a free relay dongle to ensure safety.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netz-_und_Anlagenschutz
Well, I hope that any competent electrician will measure if there's still any voltage on the circuits after pulling the breakers.
Wish these kind of panels were available at that price here. We have pretty much 12 hours of sunlight every single day but household solar panel is discouraged by the state owned utilities.
I would have thought that the issue is purchasing power inequality between germany and indonesia, not that they're not available globally at a similar price
Yes, there is inequality as can be seen in Pakistan. But once restrictions are dropped the solar panels take off.
I'm also not sure if this fits with the price restriction they mentioned. Prohibitions can't be bypassed by paying a higher price, unless it were to refer to bribes
They're hooked up in an extremely safe and responsible manner, but it's understandable that there are regulations about what can be hooked up, and simply not surprising that they haven't been updated to say "yeah, this is ok".
It's also possible to have a solar system that doesn't do this. Either you have a battery system and if you generate excess power you only put it into your own batteries or the system is small relative to the load of the house so you're rarely if ever generating more than you're actively using and configure the system so the grid is only ever attached to the input side. This should not be any more dangerous to the grid than using a UPS or charging an electric car and if the regulations make it more difficult than that they should be suspected of malicious intent.
They do so responsibly (fancy electronics that turn them off when the grid goes down). But it is the case where you are acknowledging that extra regulatory criteria make sense.
The word "diffusion" does get used in this way in English, but many native English speakers may be unfamiliar with it.
Thanks for the clarification, also on the use of the word diffusion. In social sciences it is common though, there is even a book titled “Diffusion of Innovations”.
That's 0,38 Euro/W of panel power, including inverter and cable. And there might be a solid price uptick on that because of the shop that's selling it. Wholesale from specialized shops is probably much cheaper...
The thing is: Prices are falling fast and that's great for everybody.
You'd need rather more panels (and/or some combination with batteries) to hit 900W output constantly. (on the other hand, do you need 900W constantly, or is that peak usage? A battery might be able to handle that.) That said, solar panels are probably a lot more efficient in Indonesia than they are in Germany. Since you're in/near the tropics, perhaps 1500-2000W nameplate capacity could cover your 900W? See if you can get a local expert do the maths for you.
Germany is definitely not one of those zones
If anything, I'd expect the prices to be lower. Do you have a local Indonesian equivalent of eBay like we do here in Argentina? Or, just eBay?
I assume "electricity capacity of 900W" means that the wires from the transformer (and in the walls) are only rated for 4 amps at 230VAC. This means that you can't really run a 2000-watt air conditioner at all. Whereas, with an 800-watt solar panel charging a battery, you can run a 2000-watt air conditioner 40% of the time when the panel is in full sun. Washing machines and refrigerators are an even bigger difference, since they usually have huge peaks of current draw when they start up their motors, but relatively low average power. So the solar panels may actually be a much bigger boon than simply comparing 800 to 900 makes it sound like. A single car battery can typically source 6000 watts for brief periods of time.
The state's power company seems to stop approving grid-connected solar panel system due to oversupply. It's fine if it's not connected to the grid.
If your house is provisioned for 900W peak, you aren’t running a furnace, a/c, electric heat, or an EV. 4.8 kWh will go a long way in those circumstances. (It’d handle a fridge or two if you could time shift the power, or got one that’s designed to hold cold over night with no power)
I don’t think you strictly need utility approvals to install balcony solar. Usually, you can either not wire them into the house at all, or have a switch to switch the house between grid and solar. (It’s better to back feed into the grid, but that requires utility cooperation. If properly installed the switch I describe is safe but maybe illegal.)
Legality can be a funny thing. Governments can make anything they want illegal. Here in Argentina it's illegal to import used capital equipment that hasn't been refurbished by the original manufacturer or to import maps that say that the Malvinas Islands aren't part of Argentina. In Thailand it's illegal to step on paper currency because the king's face is on it.
2.) Russian politicians openly talk about such possibility.
3.) Russian interest in expansion is no secret.
War with Russia is a real possibility. Considering NATO is not reliable anymore (due USA being less then reliable partner) , considering China seem to low key support Russia, it is not even crazy from the Russian side.
Consider what Russia could possibly have to gain by randomly flying drones near civilian airports... nothing? Consider what NATO have to gain - stirring up anti-Russian sentiment, garnering consent for massive expenditure on an "EU drone wall" and continued money laundering in the Ukraine.
Please show me where Russian politicians openly talk about flying drones around European airports? I've seen Putin and others ridicule the very notion - and it really is ridiculous. Oh, I forgot about the supposed Russian drones in Poland too, drones which don't even have the range to get to Poland, and which had literally been duct-taped together from the remains of Russian drones and placed for a photoshoot!
Look at this map of NATO's expansion eastward toward Russia, and then please do tell about Russia's supposed expansion plans: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:History_of_NATO_enla...
War with Russia is only a real possibility because the US and EU want it.
Senior population remembers soviet union with all its warts (rightfully so) but fail to account the structures that governed the union and whole topdown integration no longer exists there.
Meanwhile anyone born in the last 40 years was raised with inferiority complex due to being economically behind and treat every word from west as gospel.
> Consider what NATO have to gain - stirring up anti-Russian sentiment, garnering consent for massive expenditure on an "EU drone wall" and continued money laundering in the Ukraine.
NATO should do more to help Ukraine. They absolutely should.
>Look at this map of NATO's expansion eastward toward Russia,
That is countries deciding to join NATO in the hope it will protect them against Russia. No one forced them into NATO. Russia does not like it only because NATO prevents Russia from expanding. This is such a ridiculous talking point.
No it is not because of 3 reasons:
1. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 2. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 3. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO
War with russia is mostly hawks' and chicken littles' of the media wet dreams.
Also: "if you want peace, prepare for war" has never been more true than now, as sad as that is.
Russia had previous success (with managable pushback) annexing Crimea (and the Chechen wars before).
Things just went south really hard this time and now they're kinda stuck, just like France/Germany in WW1 or the US in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Writing off a lost war effort is also much harder for a totalitarian regime, because you are not gambling with your re-election: It's literally your life on the line, or your whole career at the very least (kleptocrat network & favors), so doubling down is kinda the most rational approach from the decision-makers PoV.
The entire war was planned as "It will be over in 3 days, we will accomplish all our objectives trivially, it will be a massive gain". There was never even an idea in the Kremlin that it would be anything other than a milk run, no contingency plan for if Ukraine fought back at all.
Russia did not even take control over hundreds of billions of dollars of cash reserves in foreign banks that they expected to be part of their war chest, and which were frozen early on.
Then they failed to take Hostomel airport, failed to be welcomed by the population, and their invasion column was an abysmal, laughable even, execution on whatever plan they had.
From that moment on, there was no "Success" option. It's geopolitical sunk cost fallacy.
Russia did not plan on losing over 4000 tanks! Russia did not plan on throwing away most of their Soviet inheritance and outright emptying all the storage yards for old tanks! They did not plan on causing the outright or near extinction of several entire types of Soviet military vehicle! They have lost 8000 IFVs! They definitely did not plan or want to lose several irreplaceable strategic aircraft, including multiple EWACS type aircraft that they didn't have a lot of in the first place, and again, irreplaceable.
Russia did not plan to have 30% of their fuel refining infrastructure damaged by a neighbor without a serious air force! Russia did not plan to have an attempted coup that was well on its way to Moscow. Russia did not plan on having most of its industry hampered by foreign export controls and limits.
Russia most certainly did not plan on having to beg and trade North Korea for a few million artillery shells, and they did not plan on having the Flagship of the Black Sea fleet sunk by a country who scuttled their navy months earlier!
If Ukraine rolled over and willingly submitted to total control today, including the actual populace (instead of resisting), Russia would still be utterly fucked for decades to come.
However I couldnt ignore this topic since im from Voronezh, Russia. Totally agree about government’s lies and impulsiveness, however:
- when they say “X is what totally not gonna happen” actually they introduce X event to the news so 99.99% it is gonna happen later
- impulsiveness huge, they got a lot of people in jail for labeling “svo” as “war” and in last months all the government refers to the conflict as to “the war”. However(!) they kinda translate will of the nation, some basic russians, trying to create narrative that will make average russian proud and happy and from the other side praying for any luck in war (actually they need not luck but supply chains, that ones are corrupted as hell, and that shit going for three centuries at least, nothing new)
So, about prep to a war I’m afraid you’re right, I don’t think it’s reasonable to stay at Russia at all for now at least for 6 years. Also it’s risky to stay in Poland and Finland. For Baltics not that risky but really depressing though. h o w e v e r
- russia had a deal for nato not to get close to its borders, that was violated in a really bad manner, the neighbor just stopped all communication from 2020 and at beginning 2022 declared cancellation of other deal of not to place any atom weapon nearby.
- USSR, and Russia asked to get in NATO a few times and got pretty rude responses “no way”. So there is nothing else this country can do if it doesn’t want to give up. The reasoning is pretty clear and emotional, stand for national security, do not became another India for UK. But the whole thing is messy, and smells like a slavs genocide. Russia became isolated, people are really angry and tolerable to constant violence threats, that is just insane turnaround since 2018 world cup that was hosted in Moscow.
This deal doesn't exist, at least anywhere on paper. There is an obligation related to the reunification of Germany that no NATO troops are stationed on the territory of former East Germany which has been honored by the reunited Germany.
Countries are also not forced into NATO, they ask to join.
> USSR, and Russia asked to get in NATO a few times and got pretty rude responses “no way”.
As far as I have read, Russia wanted to 'skip the queue' ahead of smaller countries. When this special treatment was denied, Russia suddenly didn't want to join anymore.
Just before Ukraine invasion Zelensky speak up about cancelling Budapest memorandum https://amp.rbc.ru/rbcnews/politics/19/02/2022/621108ac9a794... That’s not a first time Ukraine presidents discuss this, but that timing was tough.
About Russia - NATO membership: western media hold narrative “in 1990s Russia was close – in 2007 Putin declared independent way of using energy and army resources”, but I find this 2001 Bush reaction humiliating (reasons unknown, pure subjective observation) https://youtu.be/x7kkRkWbIzI?si=LBhci7V_qdWDBDT9
Putin says he saw some secret KGB documents about the whole east-west situation when he became a president, idk if that’s legit at all.
I can only add up to the topic that in 90s almost all oil/gas in Russia was exported by western companies, and only in 2002 all sources became formerly owned by russian companies and citizens. As for now 20% Rosneft still held by BP Russian Investments Limited.
Russia does have resources, it has the desire, and importantly the state it depends on (China) has a very strong motivation to have Nato distracted when it acts on its plans for Taiwan.
It's got to the point where the media/gov could claim Russians eat babies, and many would believe it.
Thinking about my home (in the UK) the "worst offenders" seem to be things that heat things, washing machine when it's heating water (~2.5kW), electric oven (~2-4kW), kettle (~1-2kW), electric heater (1-2kW).
Outside of those, we could have most other things on in the house and not be using much more than 1kW, though granted I've been very intentional with electrical efficiency with the electrical and electronic devices in our home (by UK standards).
But one thing to realize is that the industry was just lazy and none of this is actually "needs" a full electric line.
- You don't need actual heat for washing clothes if you using washing detergent. There are no real simple "machines" available as far as I know, except simple camping washing machines
- A rice cooker can work from as low as 250w. I have a "cooking" option in mine drawing 500w taking no longer than the usual 2000w plate (better isolation, optimized heat transfer, ...) to get water cooking.
- Heaters are difficult, I've tried a lot of electric options and they all draw a lot of power when you heat something like 20°C over the outside temperature. However ex. "Ecomat 2000" (small ceramic heater) can easily heat a average room at 450 watts.
One way to get warm and way lower wattage is heating blankets. From 50 - 100w usually on for 50% you get very far with little power.
Not sure if that helps anyone. But I spent a lot of time researching efficient caravan alternatives.
Ergo. 800 watts can be a lot.
As a data point, 200-300W is enough to heat a 35m2 wooden house to 20°C with a heat pump, in Poland, so with external temperatures normally between -5°C and 15°C.
Your watts can go much farther than you think.
Genuinely interested what you mean by this - could you expand, please?
(It seems like the success of this scheme would mean that there is a meaningful group of people who are willing to take such an approach in Germany, whether it is characterised as libertarian or otherwise?)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas...
Germany has a space problem. There aren't large swaths of land available to put solar panels on. Added to that you have to realize just how far north Germany is, and consequently how... Bad solar is because of that.
Seriously, dropping down the same amount of panels gets you significantly less electricity in Germany then where China is building them, much closer to the equator.
Overall, Germany is in a shit place for renewable energy
However, Germany does not have a space problem. Germany is 357'114km² with "photovoltaic electricity potential" of about 3.0kWh/kWp/day according to Solargis (see above link), which would be a capacity factor of 12.5%. I'm not quite sure how they calculate that, but multiplying by the country's area, the solar constant of 1000W/m², and a fudge factor of 0.8, it works out to something on the order of 30–40 terawatts, electric. That's roughly 50% to 100% more than the entire world's marketed energy consumption, which is about 18 terawatts, about a third of it electric. Germany produced 488.5 TWh in 02024 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany) which is 55.73GW.
Therefore, roughly 0.2% of Germany's land area would suffice to produce all of its current electrical consumption with solar energy, about 700km². This would also require something like 450 gigawatts (peak) of solar panels, which would cost about €45 billion at today's prices, roughly 4 days of Germany's GDP.
It is absolutely true that, if you put those same solar panels in the Mojave Desert, mounted with single-axis trackers, they would produce two or three times as much power. (California's average utility-scale solar capacity factor was over 29% last I checked.) So, yes, solar is much more expensive in Germany. But if you check out https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... you will see that, in March 02023, solar modules cost three times as much as they do now. So solar generation in California then cost what solar generation in Germany costs now. (Except that, because of Biden's anti-renewable-energy tariffs, actual California prices were and are much higher than you would expect from Solarserver.)
Grid operators project costs of around €250 billion [1] (within 2045) for grid expansion alone, and NIMBYism is a big problem everywhere in Germany.
Battery storage to allow going full PV (1 week) would be at least twice that [2].
There is also plenty of "anti-green" sentiment in Germany generally and the current government coalition is in a somewhat precarious position, discouraging long-term investments like that.
[1] Source for grid costs (this is what grid operators are planning, so take it with a grain of salt): https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023...
[2] Battery cost is just assuming full power for 1 week at 50 €/kWh (IMO quite optimistically).
However, it is true that even in light of this current situation China is building out solar a bit faster (on a per capita basis, even if adjusted for consumption) than Germany. In Germany it‘s about 1 GW added each month, which adjusted for population and energy consumption is about a factor of 1.5 compared to Chinas 25 GW per month.
Wind is lagging behind in Germany but, to be honest, looking at numbers from 2024 compared to China it’s about the same factor 1.5 difference when adjusted for population (3 GW compared to 87 GW).
Germany should be and could be as fast as China – but there aren’t humongous differences between the two countries.
0 - https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/ten-new-reactors...
By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.
We have our blinds on PVs which is very convenient. No charging required and no wires required. Same thing applies here. The PVs allow battery recharge for places where power cables are inconvenient. The phone is a convenient tailscale device with a battery that can webcam!
https://apnews.com/article/balcony-plug-solar-climate-energy...
so about 5yrs ROI
And in germany a similar 5yr ratio (With some german cities subsidizing installation):
> Weyland spent around $530 for his 600-watt-capacity system. While he’s happy with how his south-facing panels perform during balmy weather, such days are rare in northern Germany. He estimates that he’ll save around $100 in annual electricity costs and recoup his investment in about five years.
The article mentions the main motivation in Germany is also climate change and a feeling of independence, not so much economics
(And a reminder that the guidelines ask "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter".)
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