Can anybody explain how these plug-in solar panels work? I am suprised that it's possible to just plug them in to your wall socket.
For instance, isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency that comes in via the electricity net? Because to me it seems that if they won't, you will have lower benefits or even a net minus after plugging it in.
canpan 3 minutes ago [-]
Not a specialist, just from what I heard: There are two things that make it work. First they are not really "independent" like the title says. They sync with the grid frequency. If the grid is down they shut off for safety. The other reason it works is that the grid power inside the home is just what you get as incoming power 240V. For example, I think in the US you get 240V or so delivered to your house but 120V from the plug.
mytailorisrich 2 minutes ago [-]
My understanding is that plug-in solar inverters do sense what is coming from the grid and phase-sync to it with a PLL, and also adjust voltage accordingly.
cjrp 55 minutes ago [-]
The UK previously didn't allow small plug in solar panels (the kind that you just plug in to a mains socket) due to, I believe, safety reasons. This has changed within the last few days https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/solar-roadmap/
lazyasciiart 36 minutes ago [-]
I believe it’s only legal in Utah so far in the US: they legislated it last year, and apparently half the country is expected to pass a copy-paste version in their next sessions
mytailorisrich 48 minutes ago [-]
It hasn't changed... yet. The media noise is because the government has announced that they were reviewing current rules with the aim of allowing "balcony solar" by the end of the year.
(I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago. It is embarrassing to be beaten on environmentalist regulatory efficiency by Germany)
mytailorisrich 38 minutes ago [-]
> I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago
I read what is happening in exactly the opposite way. To me it shows that Milliand and the government at large do very little with no strategic thinking and no plan (same as the guys before in fairness but this government was supposed to be soo different...) and, in this case, is only reacting in a panic after almost 2 years in office to the pressure of "doing something" because of the Iran War, while also being told (slight mitigating circumstances for Milliband) that it mustn't cost anything. I always picture scenes from The Thick of It/ In the Loop when I imagine how they come up with 'ideas'.
dust42 52 minutes ago [-]
I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too.
The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing into the grid.
The problem is that in the end it will become more expensive for everybody because at times you have a surplus driving the whole sale electricity prices into the negative while still paying fixed prices for injection into the grid.
To make this economically viable, you have to have everyone paying spot prices. Everything else is just green ideology driven inefficiency.
Just to make it clear, I think renewables are an important option for the future. But to make them a viable option of the electricity energy mix, supply and demand, storage and grid capacity need to be taken into account.
Last not least, there is plenty of low hanging fruit to drive CO2 emissions down: drive up the truck tolls. Currently you have potatoes farmed in Germany, driven to Poland to get washed, transported to Italy to be converted to french fries and transferred back to Germany into the super markets.
Same goes for home office, during Covid it was possible for many workers to continue with their work. Does an accountant need to drive to an office every day? Nope. How many business trips could be replaced by a video call?
Too much green washing, too little effect.
tjansen 31 minutes ago [-]
As soon as everybody is paying spot prices, balcony power stations are not economically viable anymore. Even today, on a sunny day, spot prices for electricity are either very low or even negative. The more solar power is available, the lower these prices will be. So your balcony power station is replacing electricity you could get for free anyway. At night, when you are not producing electricity, you still need to buy the expensive electricity from fossil plants.
The reason why personal solar installations are profitable is that you can buy electricity for fixed prices from your local power company. You pay the average of the vastly different low (or negative) prices during the day and the extremely expensive prices on windstill nights. Solar allows you to use your own electricity when the average is below spot prices, and get power for much less when the price you pay is cheaper than spot prices. It's like a state-approved scheme to play the market in the name of decarbonization while actually increasing everybody else's prices and possibly even CO2 emissions.
pjc50 23 minutes ago [-]
> spot prices for electricity
There are various good websites for showing the UK generation mix, but pricing seems less public. A lot seems to be done on day-ahead, which is pricing for the whole day not minute by minute. Is there a minute-by-minute ticker? Tariff?
(the reason I'm asking is that I'm skeptical as to how true this is for places that aren't California)
tialaramex 5 minutes ago [-]
You can see spot prices at the top of grid.iamkate.com for example.
It would be nice to have some belated insight into how the bids look. Like maybe a few random hours released from a week ago?
Oh, and it's half hours. You can't buy or sell five minutes of electricity, just half hours, which is why your smart meter also thinks in half hours. 48 periods per day.
mytailorisrich 23 minutes ago [-]
To me this illustrates that with renewables (solar and wind) the key is storage. You want to grab all you can during excess production/very low prices periods and then use that for the rest of the day.
You can do exactly that by buying battery packs but (1) they are more expensice pieces of kit than solar panels and (2) capacity and output of DYI/plug in systems is very limited.
A quick check online also says that (in the UK) peak spot prices are usually 7am-10am and 5pm-9pm, which are basically when demand picks up or hasn't dropped yet while solar panels are useless...
pjc50 45 minutes ago [-]
> They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing into the grid
Neither of these is going to be true for the UK balcony scheme (you can't get export generation pricing unless it's an MCS-certified install).
> drive up the truck tolls.
The price of diesel is going to do this anyway very soon.
Gibbon1 46 minutes ago [-]
I have the curse of having an mom who was a smart CPA.
All this stuff root top solar, plug in solar costs at least twice what utility solar. And only makes sense when you have messed up rate setting schemes that enable arbitrage.
But it's not what you want if you want to get the most GW connected as fast as possible.
Like the requirements that new houses have roof top solar. You could get twice as much if you just invested the money in a conventional solar farm.
pjc50 43 minutes ago [-]
> Like the requirements that new houses have roof top solar.
As a CPA child, you should understand that the same money is very different when it comes out of a different account.
(everyone watches two critical numbers, income tax and government deficit, so the #1 priority is to hide capital spending somewhere else, in this case by moving it to buyers of new homes)
ben_w 7 minutes ago [-]
While true in general, I suspect that this won't change house prices as (I think) those are more driven by supply-demand imbalances rather than the actual costs, and that the increase in costs will go into someone else's profit margin, which may be some mix of the builders (although they're famously opaque from all the sub-contracting) and the land owners.
vrganj 43 minutes ago [-]
Thinking of this in terms of markets is the real ideologically driven inefficiency.
dust42 26 minutes ago [-]
You can spend every euro or dollar only once. If you consider CO2 emissions a critical problem, then you should spend every single dollar as efficiently as possible. Obviously independence of fossil fuels has a value too, as the current situation in the middle east shows.
It would make much more sense to import (renewable) electricity from Spain to Germany than strawberries.
myrmidon 3 minutes ago [-]
No this would not make more sense.
Grids are not set up to move significant percentages of national consumption over longer distances, and expansion is slow, expensive and prone to nimbyism.
Countries already struggle to move electrical energy inside their own borders (e.g. Germany: north=>south), shifting double digit percentages of national consumption across Europe is not gonna happen any time soon. Germany alone plans to spend at least ~€100bn over the next decade on this (internally, not on connecting Spain!).
Much more effective to focus on local generation first than to try and rely on slightly better conditions for solar panels half a continent away.
vrganj 5 minutes ago [-]
You shouldn't be spending euros or dollars at all. The economic system is the ideology holding us back.
watwut 47 minutes ago [-]
> I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too.
What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water needs to be paid too?
myrmidon 21 minutes ago [-]
Presumably that the water bill (for tap water) was priced to cover both tap water provisioning and sewage works. But people using (free) rainwater to flush toilets ruined the pricing model, making the tap water price go up.
I honestly don't see the problem, it's probably still worth it (because society still needs to provide less tap water and saves there).
Distributed energy production / storage is the key for resiliency in the future.
Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs.
And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.
friendzis 12 minutes ago [-]
> And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.
When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to cover all their fixed costs and generate return on investment over this limited timeframe, which means the actual backup prices hit stratospheric levels.
What's the actual cost of solar with actual net-billing?
te_chris 11 minutes ago [-]
Wild that you're getting downvoted for saying something so obvious. Weird.
derelicta 1 hours ago [-]
A shame local companies where I am from have year long backlogs.
pjc50 34 minutes ago [-]
The "balcony solar" system is going to be available in Lidl for no-approval self-install. Limited to 800W.
metalman 53 minutes ago [-]
to answer the first question in the article
"Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar"
my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable effort, is gratifying and relaxing in a way that money never gives.
I will add that solar pv is increadably robust, and damage tollerant as well, you can drive a claw hammer through a panel, and while it does not improve the performance, the degradation is actualy not that much, and it will continue to function for years
aaron695 32 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 10:40:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
For instance, isn't it complicated to have their output be in perfect sync with the frequency that comes in via the electricity net? Because to me it seems that if they won't, you will have lower benefits or even a net minus after plugging it in.
Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i...
(I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a decade ago. It is embarrassing to be beaten on environmentalist regulatory efficiency by Germany)
I read what is happening in exactly the opposite way. To me it shows that Milliand and the government at large do very little with no strategic thinking and no plan (same as the guys before in fairness but this government was supposed to be soo different...) and, in this case, is only reacting in a panic after almost 2 years in office to the pressure of "doing something" because of the Iran War, while also being told (slight mitigating circumstances for Milliband) that it mustn't cost anything. I always picture scenes from The Thick of It/ In the Loop when I imagine how they come up with 'ideas'.
The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing into the grid.
The problem is that in the end it will become more expensive for everybody because at times you have a surplus driving the whole sale electricity prices into the negative while still paying fixed prices for injection into the grid.
To make this economically viable, you have to have everyone paying spot prices. Everything else is just green ideology driven inefficiency.
Just to make it clear, I think renewables are an important option for the future. But to make them a viable option of the electricity energy mix, supply and demand, storage and grid capacity need to be taken into account.
Last not least, there is plenty of low hanging fruit to drive CO2 emissions down: drive up the truck tolls. Currently you have potatoes farmed in Germany, driven to Poland to get washed, transported to Italy to be converted to french fries and transferred back to Germany into the super markets.
Same goes for home office, during Covid it was possible for many workers to continue with their work. Does an accountant need to drive to an office every day? Nope. How many business trips could be replaced by a video call?
Too much green washing, too little effect.
The reason why personal solar installations are profitable is that you can buy electricity for fixed prices from your local power company. You pay the average of the vastly different low (or negative) prices during the day and the extremely expensive prices on windstill nights. Solar allows you to use your own electricity when the average is below spot prices, and get power for much less when the price you pay is cheaper than spot prices. It's like a state-approved scheme to play the market in the name of decarbonization while actually increasing everybody else's prices and possibly even CO2 emissions.
There are various good websites for showing the UK generation mix, but pricing seems less public. A lot seems to be done on day-ahead, which is pricing for the whole day not minute by minute. Is there a minute-by-minute ticker? Tariff?
(the reason I'm asking is that I'm skeptical as to how true this is for places that aren't California)
It would be nice to have some belated insight into how the bids look. Like maybe a few random hours released from a week ago?
Oh, and it's half hours. You can't buy or sell five minutes of electricity, just half hours, which is why your smart meter also thinks in half hours. 48 periods per day.
You can do exactly that by buying battery packs but (1) they are more expensice pieces of kit than solar panels and (2) capacity and output of DYI/plug in systems is very limited.
A quick check online also says that (in the UK) peak spot prices are usually 7am-10am and 5pm-9pm, which are basically when demand picks up or hasn't dropped yet while solar panels are useless...
Neither of these is going to be true for the UK balcony scheme (you can't get export generation pricing unless it's an MCS-certified install).
> drive up the truck tolls.
The price of diesel is going to do this anyway very soon.
All this stuff root top solar, plug in solar costs at least twice what utility solar. And only makes sense when you have messed up rate setting schemes that enable arbitrage.
But it's not what you want if you want to get the most GW connected as fast as possible.
Like the requirements that new houses have roof top solar. You could get twice as much if you just invested the money in a conventional solar farm.
As a CPA child, you should understand that the same money is very different when it comes out of a different account.
(everyone watches two critical numbers, income tax and government deficit, so the #1 priority is to hide capital spending somewhere else, in this case by moving it to buyers of new homes)
It would make much more sense to import (renewable) electricity from Spain to Germany than strawberries.
Grids are not set up to move significant percentages of national consumption over longer distances, and expansion is slow, expensive and prone to nimbyism.
Countries already struggle to move electrical energy inside their own borders (e.g. Germany: north=>south), shifting double digit percentages of national consumption across Europe is not gonna happen any time soon. Germany alone plans to spend at least ~€100bn over the next decade on this (internally, not on connecting Spain!).
Much more effective to focus on local generation first than to try and rely on slightly better conditions for solar panels half a continent away.
What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water needs to be paid too?
I honestly don't see the problem, it's probably still worth it (because society still needs to provide less tap water and saves there).
Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs.
And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.
When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to cover all their fixed costs and generate return on investment over this limited timeframe, which means the actual backup prices hit stratospheric levels.
What's the actual cost of solar with actual net-billing?
"Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar"
my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable effort, is gratifying and relaxing in a way that money never gives.
I will add that solar pv is increadably robust, and damage tollerant as well, you can drive a claw hammer through a panel, and while it does not improve the performance, the degradation is actualy not that much, and it will continue to function for years