Ask HN: Do you have home solar? Hi! I'm one of the co-founders of Jasmine Energy (YC S22) and I'm looking for people who have installed solar panels on their home. If thats you, would you be open to sharing the documents you received from your installer? We're working on a new tool at Jasmine Energy that may be able to help you find rebates and incentives buried deep in those documents. |
(Full disclosure: I’m in the solar industry, but on the software side. Recently left Cloudflare to join Aurora Solar as CPO.)
Berlin grants one 500€ with the purchase of a balkony solar plant.
As a result solar power has really taken off for both businesses and homes.
I guess for apartments thats better than nothing, but wouldn't it make more sense to install them on the roof of the building and tie it into rebates for everyone?
There are options to invest in solar farms which start to yield returns after some years.
In the latest round of new regulations they allowed the use of 230V Schuko plugs for balkony plants.
Thank you for helping out. Much appreciated!
TBH, best way is to talk to a solar provider. They're not as hard to stop talking to as Mormons.
Disclosure: I'm also a Jasmine cofounder.
- 12x Trina Solar Vertex S 400Wp (TSM-400DE)
- solar inverter Fronius Primo 5kW
- battery inverter Victron MultiPlus II-GX
- 8kWh LFP BYD LVS
- smart meter (zero injection setup) Victron/Giavazzi ET112
- EV charging piloted by the Victron (EVC300400300)
There was not much 400V batteries and inverters back than. I log a bit via Home Assistant, so far without InfluxDB simply because I still have to find value in logging over longer time period, pruning data etc and HA alone was time consuming to setup due to the devs passion for YAML (GRRR i HATE modern YAML mania).
Personally in commercial terms I'm DISGUSTED by the current state of thing where in China prices plunge and here in EU skyrocket, as quotes from professional installers are so high that a not-self-made system is simply economically not a good investment.
Feel free to ask what you want :-)
P.s. this thread would've been less noisy if there was a decodable email address in your profile, sweetie pie. :)
Then again, maybe you know the trick where more comments is mo' betta'. No judgement, haha.
Not everyone uses twitter and slides into the DMs like that.
Best wishes,
Metadat
Edit: please do downvote this benign message to your heart's content, cheers
[0]https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/generators/why-s...
Just install a dedicated branch circuit (or otherwise isolate it so that nothing else is using that branch), plug it in, and all the stuff in the house is indiscriminately somewhat powered by solar.
And...done. That's all there is.
Here in the States, things are a touch more difficult: Our normal residential power is 240v, but our regular branch circuits (and outlets) are 120v by using a center tapped secondary winding on the transformer as neutral.
So to power a house's stuff indiscriminately in the US with a plug-in inverter (or two) would require two different outlets that are each on different transformer taps, or a 240v outlet.
Using a singular regular 120v outlet in the US will only cover about half of the regular stuff in a house, and will never be able to power any 240v loads.
(And, yeah, we have standardized 240v outlets. But they're almost never found in a home except behind major appliances like the clothes dryer and/or electric range. We also have standards for smaller outlets that would be suitable for small appliances like a toaster or a kettle, but they're almost non-existent in the wild.
It'll be a long while before we get approved plug-in grid-tied solar here.)
If the inverter outputs when the grid has lost frequency then other inverters can respond by also starting to output. This creates a chain reaction and can generate serious currents in sections of the grid that are expected to be on outage, which is a safety hazard.
The act of plugging in a normal grid-tied solar inverter with a regular ass-plug[0] is just exactly as safe as plugging in any other electrical appliance is.
(There are other concerns, but the physical plug is not amongst them.)
If the product doesn't explicitly state this on its packaging there is absolutely a chance for competing sine waves. If this wasn't the case, transfer switches wouldn't have been invented. The original comment I replied to is simply dangerous.