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‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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This is really nice! This is the future!
I'd love to know how much they produce, especially during the winter/monthly.
not very much, especially during the winter, the best way to optimize panel production is by pointing it towards the sun most effectively, the farther north, or south, of the equator the less effective it is, the less directly it points towards the sun in general, the less power you make.
It might still produce a decent amount of power overall, through a reasonable period of time, but it's probably WELL below what you could be making with an optimized install, especially one with solar tracking, granted some solar power is still better than no solar power, so you do get tradeoffs at the end of the day.
as another commenter said, there are solar power calculators out there, if you're looking for rough figures, use them.
That kind of depends on what you're building. Standard is currently 800W (2 standard solar panels). Older models use 600W, other models are using 2000W and limit it to 800W. That doesn't make much sense, but skirts our local regulations that limits them to 800W, but of course generates more energy.
It then also depends on where you live. Can you point it to the sun? Do you live in sunny Spain or in northern Norway? In Germany a 800W system can produce 800-1200kWh per year. Our average electricity price is at 0.35€, so you'll save 280€-420€ a year. And those systems are dirt cheap, there are deals out there where you can get one for 200€. That is quite a good ROI for something that you can install in an hour.
If you want to know more, here is a calculator https://priwatt.de/service/ertragsrechner/
Yeah I get all that, but what if I need heating in the winter and have very low consumption in the summer? That is why I'm searching for real world numbers. If you give me some for a specific place then I can at least have a ballpark number if what I might get where I live.
OTOH as you say, they start to be so cheap it's almost impossible to go wrong...
That won't really work as that is the worst scenario for solar. I can give you real world data from southern germany. I don't have balcony solar, but a 13,4kWp solar system on my roof. Here is the data from this year:
As you can see, days are getting longer in Feb, generation is going up. To get a rough estimate, take my data and divide it by 16,75. That won't give you a lot of heating, esp. with a normal space heater. Even if you had a scenario, where your 800W solar system would produce 800W in the winter, your space heater will suck 2000W. Take a look at its power cord, you'll see how much it uses.
So yeah, 800W is not much, but will cover your running appliances like your fridge, freezer, router or computer on sunny days.
Hey thank you! I'm definitely saving this off for my future calculations!
You're totally correct about the rest, and I'm now able to roughly see if I should buy a 800 system or two, or theee... Electric hookups included in the calculation of course.
In the Northern hemisphere, in Winter the Sun is at a low angle, so vertically oriented panels might produce more. As an example, I have a sunroom and at Winter's Solstice the sunlight reaches about 3-4 meters into the room. At Summer's Solstice there is no direct sunlight in the room, as the Sun is overhead.
couple of things to note:
Do you have any numbers :-) ?
I have a sunroom, what sort of numbers are you asking for? It's a partly cloudy day, about 22C in the room, without heat. And about 7C outside.
Nice numbers <3