Habeck claims anyone could quite easily use 10% less energy

[fraufruit 42,494]

Our sunny balcony doesn't have a socket. 

[Krieg 15,074]

Then run an extension or install a socket or whatever.   Those "plug & play" solar systems are meant for people who can find a way to install them, if you think you can't then maybe they are not for you.    And "balkon" is just a name, they can be installed anywhere they get sun and there is a socket, they can be installed on terraces, gardens, garden houses, sheds, carports, porches, etc, etc.

[fraufruit 42,494]

Thanks. Not seriously considering it but was just curious. I have a strong aversion to exposed cables. 

[tor 17,437]

[kiplette 8,795]

19 hours ago, Krieg said:

you put the solar panels somewhere in your balcony then connect the panels to the micro-inverter and then connect the micro-inverter to any electrical socket

 

Berlin money aside, are these things thought to be a cunning plan? You get additional electricity into your house which gets used before the expensive stuff from the national grid? So you get less through your meter because of your personal magic source? Must you use it immediately or does it hang around for a bit?

 

Sorry for the really very stupid questions, but this was new to me last weekend and I still can't believe its a thing. Some acquaintances spent 500 euros two years ago on a couple of these and have had 200 euro lower bills the last two years, so that was clearly totally worth it.

[fraufruit 42,494]

30 minutes ago, tor said:

 

Gambatte out buying candles now. 

[Gambatte 972]

3 minutes ago, kiplette said:

Must you use it immediately or does it hang around for a bit?

Either use immediately or lose it forever.

To store it you need  a battery. Last time I got quotations for battery, it turned out to go even at the end of their 20yr lifetime battery price would have to drop by 90%. 

[Gambatte 972]

18 minutes ago, kiplette said:

Some acquaintances spent 500 euros two years ago on a couple of these and have had 200 euro lower bills the last two years, so that was clearly totally worth it.

 

Our system of 29modules costed 13k, has capacity 9.5kWp, and produces ca 7000 kWh/yr. Of these 7000 kWh/yr, we use directly ca 1000 kWh/yr, or 300 eur at pre crisis price.

Reading that one module (you wrote two, but you also wrote 500eur which at best is the cost for one) lowers grid reliance by 200 eur/yr, or 667 kWh/yr, seems overoptimistic.

 

Not saying it is not true but I'm extremely surprised.

[Krieg 15,074]

20 minutes ago, kiplette said:

 

Berlin money aside, are these things thought to be a cunning plan? You get additional electricity into your house which gets used before the expensive stuff from the national grid? So you get less through your meter because of your personal magic source? Must you use it immediately or does it hang around for a bit?

 

Sorry for the really very stupid questions, but this was new to me last weekend and I still can't believe its a thing. Some acquaintances spent 500 euros two years ago on a couple of these and have had 200 euro lower bills the last two years, so that was clearly totally worth it.

 

Like always in Germany, it is a bit complicated and a bit of a gray area.

 

So you buy the thing and connect it to your house, you have to consider they are very limited, the current limit is 600w.   So technically you are required to register them with a central electrical institution and with your electricity provider.   Then you have some options when you register it, mostly depends on your meter been able to go backwards or not.   In your registration you can decide you do not want anything for your excess, so this is what normally you would do if your meter can not go backwards.  So if you produce more than you are using then you are giving away the balance.   There are two other alternatives, I don't remember the details now, I think one is when you already have one meter that can go backwards (so you will not give anything away) and the other one is about replacing your meter, which you might have to pay yourself.

 

I would say they are worth if you use one of the cheapish ones that you can install yourself.   You can easily recoup your investment in about three years.   But if you have to use a pro installation then it will be much more expensive and longer to recoup.

 

However you might not be able to register the simple ones, this is because they introduced some technicalities in the regulations to expressly stop you from using those cheap ones.   But they are still considered a grey area and the situation is not clear.   From the technical point of view there is no real reason to forbid them, except that the electricity providers do not want you to have them.     You can still buy one of the cheap ones, make sure you have an approved micro-inverter, install everything yourself, and then hire an electrician just to install a "Wieland" outlet.  With this everything will be kosher and you can officially register it.   AFAIK.

[Gambatte 972]

@Krieg

 

Can electricity meters in German go backwards? I don't doubt it's easy from an engineering point of view to manufacture such a meter,  but I never heard of such meters being around in Germany. Beside, the electricity suppliers probably do not like these meters because they make them lose money, so I thought they strongly lobbied against and to produced some exotic argument to have them not allowed or whatever. 

[Krieg 15,074]

This is an example of one of the two registrations you have to do:

 

https://www.pvplug.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/DGS_Anmeldeformular_Steckdosen-Solarmodul.pdf

 

You see three options down there.  The first one is when your meter can't go backwards and you give up the excess and you do not accept the meter to be changed.  The last one is when your meter is bidirectional.  The one in the middle is the complicated one, you are trying to pass the problem to the provider but you do not want to pay anything if a new meter must be installed.

[Gambatte 972]

Interesting.

I'm surprised the energy companies have not successfully lobbied against these.

I guess these bi-directional meters are allowed only with small photovoltaic system. With big ones, like ours, we give to the grid more energy than we take from them 6000 and 1400 kWh/yr, so if we had a bidirectional meter it would soon go below zero.

[Krieg 15,074]

Maybe it will take time because Es ist Deutschland hier, but I think it will come sooner or later.  In Netherlands you can already "park" all your electricity in the grid.   However they are introducing new laws this year because they are losing tax revenue.   They want to tax the electricity you park, or something like that.   So, they taxing the sun.

[Gambatte 972]

I see it different.

At the moment, the electricity you buy from the grid costs much more than the one you sell to the grid.

So making the mater bidirectional would result in a money loss for the utility companies. I don't think this will happen. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[kiplette 8,795]

4 hours ago, Gambatte said:

seems overoptimistic.

 

They have older kids so one probably came home less/moved away during that time and made a difference as well. I agree it seemed kind of wild.

 

Interestingly they know it works because they had their kitchen 'done' and the fitters switched off all the electricity to the house and were surprised there was still current, at which point this couple remembered their garage roof panels  - and it was an overcast day.

[emkay 10,319]

Just curious about this….at the end of last year, our electricity supplier hiked the price by about 50% at the end of our contract. Switching supplier wasn’t possible as at that time as new contracts were much more expensive. 
 

The new price is not subject to a price guarantee.  Options were then available for new contracts with price guarantee. We decided against these as the price was much higher. Now however, the price we are paying is a lot more than new contracts with the same supplier and that of Grundversorgung. My question is, are contracts without price guarantee eligible for price reduction? 

[scook17 292]

On 2/20/2023, 2:36:30, Gambatte said:

Our system of 29modules costed 13k, has capacity 9.5kWp, and produces ca 7000 kWh/yr. Of these 7000 kWh/yr, we use directly ca 1000 kWh/yr, or 300 eur at pre crisis price.

Reading that one module (you wrote two, but you also wrote 500eur which at best is the cost for one) lowers grid reliance by 200 eur/yr, or 667 kWh/yr, seems overoptimistic.

 

For comparison, I have a smaller 5.8 KW/h system. It has produced over the past 5 years an average of 6.4KW/year. In year one, average was 29% own consumption, where as on of 2023, managed to get it to 40% own consumption. 40% BTW takes a lot of effort. Gambatte figures show just 14% own consumption. It depends on when you are using the power vs. when it's generated. Otherwise, expensive batteries.

 

Problem of course, as Gambatte says, is the huge installation costs. You can literally buy a balcony solar system and do everything yourself. That system can be on a garage, terrance, garden, shed etc. All you need is a power socket, or extension lead to the power socket. Solar energy goes to a little micro inverter box on the back of the solar and out comes 240volts which you just put into a standard plug socket. Note you can't use an inside extension cable outside, but need a water resistant one. These are the red ones with little flaps over the unused sockets you can buy in the hardware store.

 

Of course, Germany, being Germany said that's far too simple and there is no money in that that the state can somehow take a cut of, except MWST on the purchase price. So offically you have to have an electrician install a 'special' solar socket only used in Germany not anywhere else in the EU, so the electricity can be 'correctly' put into the house. This means some money for the local installers and an additional cost for you.

 

In my little village, I have noticed quite a few people have installed the solar balcony system over the past year or so.

[Astridx 40]

1 hour ago, scook17 said:

 

For comparison, I have a smaller 5.8 KW/h system. It has produced over the past 5 years an average of 6.4KW/year. In year one, average was 29% own consumption, where as on of 2023, managed to get it to 40% own consumption. 40% BTW takes a lot of effort. Gambatte figures show just 14% own consumption. It depends on when you are using the power vs. when it's generated. Otherwise, expensive batteries.

 

Problem of course, as Gambatte says, is the huge installation costs. You can literally buy a balcony solar system and do everything yourself. That system can be on a garage, terrance, garden, shed etc. All you need is a power socket, or extension lead to the power socket. Solar energy goes to a little micro inverter box on the back of the solar and out comes 240volts which you just put into a standard plug socket. Note you can't use an inside extension cable outside, but need a water resistant one. These are the red ones with little flaps over the unused sockets you can buy in the hardware store.

 

Of course, Germany, being Germany said that's far too simple and there is no money in that that the state can somehow take a cut of, except MWST on the purchase price. So offically you have to have an electrician install a 'special' solar socket only used in Germany not anywhere else in the EU, so the electricity can be 'correctly' put into the house. This means some money for the local installers and an additional cost for you.

 

In my little village, I have noticed quite a few people have installed the solar balcony system over the past year or so.

Could a self installed garage solar system be used to charge an electric car? Would it be too be connected to the main house electric system?

[fraufruit 42,494]

1 hour ago, scook17 said:

In my little village, I have noticed quite a few people have installed the solar balcony system over the past year or so.

 

I wonder how many hired electricians to do it. 

[Gambatte 972]

4 hours ago, scook17 said:

In year one, average was 29% own consumption, where as on of 2023, managed to get it to 40% own consumption. 40% BTW takes a lot of effort. Gambatte figures show just 14% own consumption. It depends on when you are using the power vs. when it's generated. Otherwise, expensive batteries.

I think the biggest contributor to this is that 2023 production is still extremely modest. So of course own use % is easily much higher.

My 2023 production and own use so far are 87kWh and 283kWh, so 31%, whereas for the full 2022 they were 1031 and 7488 kWh, so 14%.

Beside, for the same reason with a smaller yearly tot. production of course % own use is higher. This makes oversized system less financially attractive.

 

For curiosity: my June 2022 data:

production: 1224kWh, own use: 138kWh, so own use only 11%. With a bigger system my June production would have been bigger, but own use kWh would remain almost unchanged.