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.
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.
I’ve got one of those big Anker Solix power stations. I have two ideas for it:
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My wood shop is powered by one 20A breaker from my house. Running lights, dust collection and power tools is a lot to ask of a single 20A circuit, so the power station is basically another one.
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As an emergency power source for my refrigerator. In the not infrequent event of a power failure, I have some power that isn’t a gasoline powered generator.
Turns out, it’s got a TOU mode. So if you’re on one of those time-of-use plans with your power company, you can set this thing to store power from when it’s cheap, pass through when it’s average, and provide power from battery when it’s expensive. My refrigerator, apparently, draws a near constant 165 watts. So I might look into that here.
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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.
I hear that. Their concern trolling can look or sound right on the surface (“worker safety is our top priority!”) and still be disingenuous af.
They know just as well as we do that we have the knowledge and skills to make safe, cost effective, and accessible solar panels and batteries for homes. There are tons of real-world examples already that we can learn from, refine for our particulars, and use just by looking at Europe and Southeast Asia. There’s a safety standard/framework for plug-in solar that’s already been published for the US, UL 3700. (It’s been out for six months now!)
Any “discussions” about how to make plug-in solar safe for North American users are kvetch sessions for nervous executives clutching their pearls.
Just a small remark: In Germany, we had this discussion and all time-and-money-winning discussions already. We are through it.
It‘s safe. If you know some Germans, you might have an idea that we looked into and discussed every single screw and aspect of those systems.
Everybody buys those cool PV‘s. We even got a nationwide law that nobody (even not your landlord of your appartement) can stop you to plug it in your home grid.
Buy it. Install it. Love it.
No, you dont understand, we can’t just look elsewhere to find examples that have been shown to work well, we have to spend all our money on developing a completely parallel set of rules and regulations from the ground up because of … reasons.
It’s the same thing with bike lanes: every city spends the whole budget on doing “studies” of different designs rather that just building the exact designs that the Dutch have perfected.
In this case, the unfortunate thing is we can’t just buy German gear since the voltage and frequency of our grids are different.
There might also be some issues with how things are wired.
A lot of Europeans are under the impression that the American power grid distributes 110 volts. It doesn’t, it distributes 220. Our transformers are center-tapped, the center tap is considered neutral and the other two hot. Measure between the hots, you get 220, which is how we power big things like stoves and HVAC and such, normal outlets are wired between neutral and one of the hots.
The US has plug and socket standards for 220. You’d think you could take something like a British kettle, nip the weird British plug off of it, put an American 220 plug on it, and plug it into one of those 220 sockets, right? A resistive heater like a kettle doesn’t care about the AC frequency. It might care that what it thinks is the Neutral wire has 110V potential from Ground.
We did that. We’ve already done that part, it’s finished! We have standards and guidelines.
This is such a frustrating wait!
Another potential issue is the possibility of overloading a circuit if these are used incorrectly. Basically, having enough load on the same circuit as too many of these panels would cause over current that is not seen by the upstream breaker. That’s probably an unlikely circumstance but something to be aware of and to design controls to prevent.
You have to understand, for this to happen you would need more than 15/20 amps of electrical use plugged into that circuit. As soon as a cloud reduces the solar output, the entire load would be on the utility end of the circuit and the breaker would trip.
I agree. Clouds are my preferred form of overcurrent protection.
I guess my point is that creating an over current condition requires plugging in more demand than the circuit is designed for, and the solar piece would only allow that setup to run intermittently. A reasonable person would turn off some of the load or move it to other outlets the first time the breaker tripped.
They are typically reduced to 800W upstream. And you should plug only one into one current.
At the end it depends in the strength/ thickness of your power cable.
And you should plug only one into one current.
What happens when you plug in more than one? Is there some kind of safety circuitry that detects this and shuts it off?
I don’t think so.
Even the correct cable connection is essential - parallel or serial PV panels into the inverter.
If you do not read the fck manual, you should not play with power toys.
Seems like the safest thing to do is to design products to fail safely even if the owner doesn’t follow the manual. Relying on the competence of end users alone is, in my opinion, not enough.
Those systems are save. However, one can always crash it, if not used properly or fiddling around.
Same as you can refuel diesel in your petrol car. You can’t avoid dumb users entirely.
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.
As well as the risks of shoddy kit, there is also a grid stability issue.
Basically, solar can go off an on at a fairly rapid rate, compared to what the grid is designed for. This can lead to instabilities. Either brownouts or spikes in voltage. This can panic some grid equipment and force a shutdown.
What they should do is invest in their infrastructure and make it better able to cope with a distributed supply, distributed load setup. We all know how they feel about investments however!
Funny boy.
Do you think a company invests heavily into infrastructure to undermine its core business (selling power)?
Tell me tell you from Germany: No. For last 20 years. No
They do invest (reluctantly) when grid stability becomes compromised. That’s the point where regulators and politicians start taking a strong interest. That’s why they removed and moan about anything that can upset the balance in the grid.
Unfortunately, the upgrades can take time, so we not only need to bully them into them, but also give them time to actually do them. Fuck knows how we pull that off however, so we might as well go full steam for solar!
Kind of an ad, but I wrote https://tiny-solar.space/ to help plan systems like this.
If you’re in the US: https://www.pluginsolarmap.com/
Oh shit! My state just passed plug in solar!
Where the heck do I get some lol
Thats the problem: no one actually makes the devices yet, but there are official standards now, so I bet we’ll be getting the first devices before the end of the year.
Looked like the site was saying that Germany already uses this, so I have to imagine someone is making devices already.
They do, but they use different voltage and frequency for their grid, so you can’t just buy one of theirs and use it.
