I am not sure 1.5m Germans all deciding on a single course of action is something to be happy about.
You have Trump now. It’d be our turn to make jokes, if we had any humour.
Nah, making fun of germans is always ok, especially now that at least 1 in 5 voters are voting for literal Nazis again in Germany.
We have passed the torch of a fascist dystopia to another country.
During WW2, there were multiple
A mere drop in the bucket when 77m have decided on a much worse course of action in another country.
Why? Can you explain a little bit?
I am not sure if you are a student of history but twice before the Germans decided to go to war and have as their foe the world.
And how is that related to balcony solar?
We happily take the blame for WW2, but WW1 is on Austria!
Don’t know about “happily”. “Readily” might be more accurate.
On second thought… yeah.
It was a quote from Norm Macdonald, comedy - look it up if German search engines lower themselves with such humourous returns. The Germans are what they are, today they fought against appeasement and led a European announcement of greatly increased defense spending to support Ukraine and the world more widely, a difficult and noble decision. Filling the gap left as the US falls ever further into shame.
And does this have anything to do with generating power from solar panels on your own balcony?
*hurrdurr* Germany! Hitler! *hurrdurr*
Oh, German=Nazi reference, how original.
Nearly 100 years on time to move on and focus on the ones that carried it on I think
“100 million smokers can’t be wrong!”
Germans also have 7 times the power bill
I blame Bavaria. If Germany had multiple price zones like other European countries instead of one giant one prices would plummet here in the north, while they’d explode in Bavaria. The state that does not want wind power, does want nuclear power, but already knows ahead of time that its geology (with lots of mountains and granite) is unsuitable for nuclear waste storage. Meanwhile, north German wind power and Scandinavian hydro dams complement each other perfectly. The Bavarians could do the same with the Austrians, they just don’t. They want to eat cake and have it, too.
Am Bavarian can confirm. The CSU has been in power this state since forever. Especially old people just keep voting for them cause it’s the way it always was. They had to form a coalition after the last elections. Their partner is essentially the exact same party but even more right wing. Not even kidding, I could not name a single area where they differ other than their main guy apparently handed out nazi newspapers in his younger years or smth. He blamed it on his brother and then the scandal just died off.
Those small balcony systems pay for them here in Germany at ~35 Cents/kWh in a few months. Even if your power bill is 7x cheaper, they will pay for themselves easily.
nb4 someone laughs at us Germans for pulling out of nuclear power: No, nuclear is not cheap. It’s literally the most expensive way to generate electricity. Solar is cheap and better for the environment.
French electricity enters the chat.
French electricity leaves the chat in summer when their plants need to be shut down because the rivers are too warm or don’t carry enough water in the first place. And that’s nothing to say what they will do in the next decade years when a good portion of their reactors should be commissioned out.
Nuclear is cheaper than your average electricity cost.
I know because I’m Swedish and you use us as your cheap electricity.
No, nuclear is not cheap. It’s literally the most expensive way to generate electricity
Source?
Beats coal anytime. Or Russian gas.
I obviously don’t consider fossil fuels as an option. And I do doubt that it’s cheaper to build a nuclear plant compared do building a coal or gas fired one.
Nuclear is reliable, predictable and stable 24/7 source. Solar not so much and possibly not that great for the environment if we don’t figure out what to do with used solar panels. Also their production is not exactly clean. Whereas nuclear requires a wasted fuel storage somewhere and the fuel will eventually run out of radiation in some hundreds of thousands years.
Storing something extremely dangerous extremely safely for “some hundreds of thousands of years” doesn’t exactly sound cheap, does it?
Not that expensive either. And that’s already included in the energy price. Also volume is magnitudes smaller than used solar panels.
That’s 4’ 11" - I had no idea Germans were so short.
I wonder why only those people have balcony solar. Why aren’t other Germans interested?
Nobody else found it odd that these solar installations are just flying away?
First the trans people come for my energy, then they come for my trains? When will the madness end? Won’t someone think of the children!
Read it as germans who are 1.5 meter tall, wondered why them being short is relevant.
This is really nice! This is the future!
I’d love to know how much they produce, especially during the winter/monthly.
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.
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
couple of things to note:
- Not every balcony is southern facing
- Most older European homes don’t have A/C yet, so electrical costs are more during the winter months (that trend will change though I imagine)
- I think the numbers @Valmond@lemmy.world was asking about involved power output, that of course depends on the size of your array, daily/monthly/yearly differences in weather, and all sorts of little nuances that’s hard to say without averaging out years worth of data.
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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.
Be careful there - you’re pushing electricity in your grid and there is a reason why only one system is permitted in Germany. Don’t hook up two or three without talking with an expert.
Thank you for your concern, I surre will not do anything crazy without knowing what I’m doing :-)
This is great for people who live in the middling latitudes.
By putting the solar panel at a 90 degree angle though it is much less efficient than e.g. a 45 degree angle.
The most have a 45 degree angle
Less efficient than not having them?
I hung a solar panel vertically on my fence one time. It was facing west rather than south, but I was only getting about 3-4 watts on my 100 watt panel under the best conditions.
Wrong question. The right question is: is the solar panel able to be CO2 neutral (at least) or CO2 negative. We don’t get anything out of it if producing the solar panel costs more CO2 emissions than it saves by producing electricity.
Before you ask: I don’t know the answer. I was looking into this thread in hope to find it.
To be a positive impact, they just need to be less carbon intensive thans the energy they displace. According to the first results on google, (presumably utility-scale) solar is about 12 times less carbon intensive than natural gas and 20 times compared to coal. So as long as you’re replacing base load and not utility solar, balcony solar could be as much as 10 times less efficient and still come out a net positive.
Keep in mind also that these numbers keep improving as solar panel manufacturing becomes more efficient and starts using more green energy itself over the coming decades
Most people don’t care about being CO2 neutral. The real question is what is the ROI? Will the panel save that person money. If it takes 50 years to pay for itself, I’d say that’s bad. 10 years is more standard. 5 years I say it’s a no brainer. Though I suppose you can also argue value for utility, if that is giving her the ability to power something off grid that would be worth something.
In Germany those panels usually pay themselves after about 5 years depending on the price of the necessary electronics (don’t forget the electricity meter!) and if there’s also a battery.
You don’t need a smart meter for this, just plug and play. If seen offers for complete sets from as low as 250€ in supermarkets, so almost everyone can get one and start saving some power.
Depends, is an imaginary angle comparable to a 45 degree angle?
Might be most efficient when power is in higedt demands, in the morning and evenings when everyone is using power at home.
That pic is great, haha. Woman looks so smug.
It’s going to be hard to justify production costs, but in places that subsidize it: it makes perfect sense to scale up solar wherever possible.
The actual problem are electricity prices rising higher and that shortens to time to reach the equilibrium between the investetment
Hard to justify costs? The article quotes 6 years of amortization. I know numbers around 8-10 years in Germany.
Show me any consumer investment, that gives such a good ROI.
PRODUCTION COSTS.
It’s assumed that the equivalent solar wouldn’t be installed somewhere else, so you would need to produce more total to meet demand, meaning increased production costs with an upwards cost growth curve based on scale unless the materials, usually aluminum and slabs of silicon fresh out the oven or sometimes cadmium telluride, are already overabundant.
8-10 years is a fully fledged pv system. The small balcony panels pay themselves after about 5 years, longer if you add a battery.
For first few seconds, I deadass though they are talking about Germans with a height of 1,5 meters.
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Only Germans this high have balcony solar
Makes sense, taller Germans throw too much of a shadow to make the solar worth it.
That was me.
So why won’t taller Germans get solar? I don’t even see the connection to height… Oh, maybe they hit their heads on the panels? No, that doesn’t seem likely… I don’t get it.
There is something in it - they are making solar panels with chemicals that makes energy trans
Isn’t wind energy better on balconies?
If everyone puts wind turbines on the balconies they might end up blowing the building over
Hmm no,
- first oft all: noise. Wind turbines have moving parts, that attached to a building or even worse attached to a balcony creates noise in the whole building. Imagine the rattling of 5-6 ~10 year old, bad maintained, wind turbines.
- Second: the energy output is rather low. A 1,2KW turbine is about 1.2m/3.9feet big. That’s in spherical, cause it has to be able to rotate by wind direction.
- Third: balconies are preferred to not have wind, but sun.
- And last but not least: blades. Every windturbine form factor has (fast) moving blades. If it’s reachable someone is going to stick a finger in it.
If you’re living more suburban and have a windy detached place to setup a small windturbine that’s an option. On the garage or shed for example.
Doubt it. Wind around buildings tends to be shit.
There’s a reason they build turbines on hilltops and out at sea.
Sadly really small wind turbines are really ineffective and not worth the investment until you have a really windy balcony. If you only have a few square meters solar is the only choice.
But I’d still love to have a small windmill in my garden.
My North-East facing balcony doesn’t get enough sun light. But it’s an interesting idea.
My dumb ass: “Is it just 1.5m Germans, or other heights too?”
M in million should always be capitalised for this reason.
1.5M Germans vs 1.5m Germans
1.5 10^6 Germans vs 1.5 10^-3 Germans
Megagermans vs milligermans
This me me lol. Thank you 😂
Megagermans just sound evil.
And milligermans, well there’s a vaccine against that I think.
Until I read this comment I was 100% certain the post was about short Germans somehow preferring having their balconies occluded by taller-than-them solar panels.
Maybe they’re also nudists, or otherwise like their privacy
1.5m Germans are 150cm people !
