Balcony solar PV

[Joeboy]

This popped up in a news feed this morning. Most days I can handily use a 10A incoming PV supply. It's not the cheapest solution yet simple and portable. I could see this selling well. Looks like quite a pro set up all the way through to smart plugs & app.

Ripple prices at £1,049 per MWh at Derril Water and has co-op longevity and scale whereas this is £2,416 per MWh with built in battery degradation. Hmmn, ok. I wouldn't buy it at that price yet it is a one stop simple access to PV world.

https://uk.ecoflow.com/pages/powerstrea ... H5EALw_wcB

[Mr Gus]

Playing devils advocate here..

We have discussed over several years how illegal balcony solar for a bunch of flats would be,fed into.a tower.blocks.electrical.system.
The get around seeming to be a big battery, ..which some idiot will insist on dragging to the park on a sunny day for some tunes.

The govt are scared of batteries, (e-scooters etc) due to fire potential, badly maintained, etc, ..then when this sort of thing sells it will be uncontrolled mayhem as chinese markets jump on the bandwagon & total lack of regulation & quality...well look wjhat grenfell did for the insulation market!I


Likely to be banned in anything over 3 storeys / put on hold ..if fitted without approval councils.will likely force.entry & tear them down due to potential risk to other residents (obvious due to presence on a balcony)

It is a logical move that if it is to go ahead.will likely be resolved by booking a pair of council fitter who has done an online day course or similar & been awarded a certificate of competence & who utiliises tamperproof fittings for the solar (fitted overhanging balcony rails) ..& how much will they insist on charging for that I wonder!?

That won't stop people buying non approved battery systems though & arguing a point though,govt remains twitchy after grenfell.

(on another note, any idea how fire safe the proposed solution of "floating hotel / prison" solution of housing for asylum seekers is, probably a safety nightmare for the fire brigades involved). grenfell 2 possibly?

[Joeboy]

My takeaway last time was the varying resistance in the spring contacts in 3 pin UK plugs.

These are available now, I am going to keep an eye out for the first I see! I've got to admit that even having a reasonable experience level in solar and recognizing the pro's & con's I still think that these are a good idea and seductive at that. You've made a lot of good points Gus, Imagine a full tower block with these on the Southside. Talk about use of existing space!

Maybe these battery units are wired to be on demand and don't pump into the grid when the battery is full and standing by? Which of course would be daft but it would take the potential load off the block electrics. They are set at a max of 10A so we are not talking massive power (base unit)..

We went Ripple Derril Water as the solution to access Solar for the Edinburgh place. Just so simple and infinitely portable up to and including charging the EV anywhere in Europe. That is hard to beat in solar, in City. Nonetheless, I think these will sell. I am impressed the way they have gathered together multiple existing ideas and present it as quite a slick easyfit package.

[Mr Gus]

I'm all for utilising balcony solar believe me.

But look at personal electric transport laws, ..still up in the air, no end in site, no solution as to what go's & what is design dangerous (user competence & compliance being another thing entirely) .. "for hire" e -scooter market is just wrong & limited to where it deigns to operate (profitable, concentrated areas) compared to everywhere & is how I see it now as having another 3-5 years before they get over hang ups, in the meantime more sales are made without standards of design safety for both battery safety, waterproofing, & minimum wheel & tyre size... ditto all sorts of non regulated big battery banks on the likes of amazon & ebay ...how long before another knee jerk based on rogue production, bad fitting, fire video doing the rounds which kyboshes the growth of battery & solar in one fell swoop, cueing the usual print headlines & results, ..the follow up being "home battery systems torn out/ in limbo due to house insurance" etc.

And please remember if my kid was still at the local secondary, she would no longer be able to get the bus TO school as a sixth former in time for lessons, let alone a kid to school on a regular early morning service, because there weren't any. ..this is in a "commuter village" & typifies the lack of public transport access to all but big towns & cities, the same ones that push its outcasts onto the financial burden of councils elsewhere "forced internal migration that draws from other areas of coffers paid out that "might" have made it to transport (& less cars)

Govt & local councils will *still* insist on private sector fitters not their own for security of tower-blocks & residents, just like we have never encountered rogue solar fitters & glazing salesmen eh!?

Regardless of "our liability ends at sign off upon installation, I cannot see a positive outcome once a few systems (for whatever reason) fail in a dramatic manner, or are badly fitted / don't payback fast enough (the usual grabbing headlines)

(if its a council scheme, with council trained fitters making clear it is only an approved list of suppliers then we have market problems, price gouging at the top end etc... as well as sweating council wondering if their workers did the job properly, after all their own people took shortcuts that affected the outcome at grenfell after all... so we end up full circle as everyone shirks responsibility for "prone" housing & occupants ..thus mothballed decision on legality + "grey area of the law & open to risk of fines & kit confiscation ..all via my crystal ball, but y'know what I mean.

In these instances I always think of paracetamol & generic sudafed cold & flu sales limitations imposed incorrectly upon us because "the public are not to be trusted" (says the *whichever* untrustworthy govt in power of the time)

Thus the proverbial run-around ensues amplifying both problem & solution, no doubt decided by non experts ultimately.

( With e-scooters my own mp has an "ignore rate" for incoming letters of around 2/3 (I checked the stats) the M.Keynes scottish tory in charge of the discussions is also seeming to ignore my questions both addressed on personal electric transport & flawed AI (as experienced with tesla) as both a contact with his seat as an mp & as a transport select commitee chair who does a lot of the talking in videos from commons on the subject primarily based on MK which is preey much like no other part of the country (with or without garden city design plan status) respectively (they are fix focused on city use & legislation potential based on built up areas only from what I've watched read & heard, because the majority of discussion is based on experiences via the area of legal scooter hire use, not beyond)

Remember, an mp will only accept letters sent from outside their area if passed on via another mp, if the original mp ignores your letter (whilst making a big point on how low their stationry & office cost claims are. ..then you are "phucked" from the outset as you have no recourse..

Exempli Gratia....

https://www.iainstewart.org.uk/
Chair of the Transport Select Committee

[Mart]

Slight digression, but talking about a block of flats, that was one of the examples from the PV trolls, going back a decade or so.

People in flats etc etc, can't benefit from PV, blah blah blah, ignoring of course investing in a solar farm, or even better now, something like Ripple, with an actual impact on your bill.

But, getting to the point, I always argued that a block of flats would be great for BIPV* (building integrated PV), or simply retrofitting, by cladding the outside with PV panels on sunny sides. Obviously the cladding argument got tricky after the Grenfell Tower disaster, as trolls could throw 'oh great, cladding' comments in, despite the obvious differences.

For generation comparisons, popping a PVGIS pin on my house in Cardiff gives 1,026kWh/kWp for south facing, and optimised pitch of 39d, whilst south facing at 90d pitch is 733kWh/kWp.

For want of a better calculation for area, I'm just going to pick my house (1930's semi-detached 3 bed, but of course many flats will be smaller than 3 bed), which has faces of approx 5m by 5m (ignoring roof), so 25m2, then half that for windows, so 12m2, maybe 2.5kWp, and 1,800kWh's pa. That would be useful, I think. Better still would be if they are 45d off south, so have a SE and SW facing wall. Those are ~about 670kWh/kWp pa, so that's ~3.3MWh's pa.

[Figures corrected as I'd used 0d pitch instead of 90d pitch for vertical wall mounted.]

Of course, now I'm picturing a row of tower blocks, all laid out like dominoes in a south facing row, so only one does well.


*Old story, but really made BIPV famous for many, at the time:

The school with the largest solar facade in the world

The 12,000 colored solar panels really make the Copenhagen International School’s new building stand out. They completely cover the building and will provide it with 300 MWh of electricity per year, meeting over half of the school’s energy needs. The panels are a distinctive sea green, yet no pigments were used to make them. The color comes from a process of light interference developed over a number of years in EPFL labs.

[Mr Gus]

Never seen that piece / school, ...very nice!

Transpose the cost to planned (presumably better spaced & less profitable) NEW housing stock, with exterior insulation, how much per estate house I wonder? (you can hear the building companies slamming brakes on already)

I have been wondering about the whole "portable battery thing" for some months, there is a big energy crisis & affordability surge in this product on deal sites, ali express et al of which we will never know the true spec, chemistry etc because price trumps all...you see it in the e-scooter market (lets not go back to that again in the same thread)

Will not cause a stir in the media until the media deems it profitable, till then fingers crossed, ..but solar will take a portion of the blame for sure, because its already utilised & known.

Thankfully, in this current thread (on HUKD) it is stated early on about one chemistry being not as safe as another, but in print is not necessarily read nor absorbed.
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/ac50s- ... 1#comments

[Joeboy]

Slight digression, but talking about a block of flats, that was one of the examples from the PV trolls, going back a decade or so.

People in flats etc etc, can't benefit from PV, blah blah blah, ignoring of course investing in a solar farm, or even better now, something like Ripple, with an actual impact on your bill.

But, getting to the point, I always argued that a block of flats would be great for BIPV* (building integrated PV), or simply retrofitting, by cladding the outside with PV panels on sunny sides. Obviously the cladding argument got tricky after the Grenfell Tower disaster, as trolls could throw 'oh great, cladding' comments in, despite the obvious differences.

For generation comparisons, popping a PVGIS pin on my house in Cardiff gives 1,026kWh/kWp for south facing, and optimised pitch of 39d, whilst south facing at 0d pitch is 855kWh/kWp.

For want of a better calculation for area, I'm just going to pick my house (1930's semi-detached 3 bed, but of course many flats will be smaller than 3 bed), which has faces of approx 5m by 5m (ignoring roof), so 25m2, then half that for windows, so 12m2, maybe 2.5kWp, and 2,100kWh's pa. That would be useful, I think. Better still would be if they are 45d off south, so have a SE and SW facing wall. To my shock, those are 855kWh/kWp pa too (unless I'm doing something stupid), so that's ~4MWh's pa.

Of course, now I'm picturing a row of tower blocks, all laid out like dominoes in a south facing row, so only one does well.


*Old story, but really made BIPV famous for many, at the time:

The school with the largest solar facade in the world

The 12,000 colored solar panels really make the Copenhagen International School’s new building stand out. They completely cover the building and will provide it with 300 MWh of electricity per year, meeting over half of the school’s energy needs. The panels are a distinctive sea green, yet no pigments were used to make them. The color comes from a process of light interference developed over a number of years in EPFL labs.

It would be a pleasure to walk past that building each morning. I love that it took 12 years to develop the colour process. Absolutely astonishing commitment to an abstract idea yet such a result

As to the PV trolls, I rarely listen to what my arse says. I would take that logic (ethos) forward and just hear the wind blow.

[Mr Gus]

Tempted to find the place just to take it in, midsummer / Sankthansaften 2024 seems good. (bit late to book now)

[Mart]

As to the PV trolls, I rarely listen to what my arse says. I would take that logic (ethos) forward and just hear the wind blow.

Warning this is just some pointless reminiscing, and of no great value, so probably best to skip over. You have been warned!


Thankfully things are so much better now, and I really don't think need arguing, as the course is set, and the technologies, such as RE, storage, BEV's heatpumps etc are proving themselves.

But sadly, back in 2011/2012 and through to say 2015, the trolling and lies had a bigger impact on people's opinions then, as these changes were new, scary and unproven (to many).

I spent (or wasted) vast amounts of time pushing back on the trolling and lies on the MSE website, the worst of which was to claim that the FiT scheme was immoral. So as each new thread was started by someone asking for advice on getting PV, the first two replies would always come from two trolls, telling them that the scheme was immoral.

The immoral argument is 'fun' in the least fun way possible, it goes like this - every leccy customer in the UK pays into the fund, but only those that get PV installed via FiTs benefit, so that's not fair, hence immoral.

And for anyone shaking their head in confusion, yes that's basically the description of any subsidy scheme, a large number pay in, and those doing the desired 'thing' get the subsidy.

Sadly, their immoral argument was helped enormously by the rabidly, anti-PV article published in the Guardian, from George Monbiot. To say that all of the claims are incorrect is generous, and polite v's calling the whole article a pack of lies.

Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?

But the opening paragraph states:

Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green rip-off. Finally it arrives, and nobody notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%. Yet the media is silent. The opposition urges only that the scam should be expanded.

For context, the original budget was £8.6bn. So George didn't pick a proportion out of the air, no, he falsely claimed that it will all be paid by the poorer element of the domestic sector, rather than spread across all customers in all sectors. For example, if the 'poor' are 20%, and the domestic sector is 35%, then assuming equal leccy consumption, the 'poor' would actually fund 7%. And that's before we consider that a large amount of the FiT funding went to LA's and Social Housing, who fitted PV on their properties at no charge to the occupants. The LA/SH would receive the FiT monies, whilst residents saw bill reductions thanks to PV generation.

The article was so bad, that Windworks compiled the many responses made by environmental organisations who were outraged:-

Growing Backlash to Monbiot Attack on Solar PV

So that's why I used to push back on anti-RE crap.

These days, I'll call out false info, but no need to argue as much, as the critics are just making fools of themselves now. And AGW denial (even that posted on this site a few weeks back) can't (I feel) impact opinions, policies and actions much anymore ..... not that we shouldn't act even faster.


This may sound very heavy and serious, but looking back, a lot was silly, and it's great to see the technologies and economics doing the arguing now. So may have been a waste or time, but probably many other things would have been even less productive, and luckily I had the time to waste.

[Mart]

PS, for fun - George pushes nuclear, and explains how it's cheaper in terms of support/subsidy.

When the FiT was ended, it offered UK housholders 3p/kWh subsidy for 20yrs, for their dare I say, small and inefficient systems.

Two years after George's article, the HPC subsidy was set. It's now (index linked) at £128/MWh. Assuming prices go back to normal after Europe resolves the gas shortage / price spike following the invasion of Ukraine, then that would be about £50/MWh, so a subsidy of ~£78/MWh, or 7.8p/kWh, for 35yrs, to be paid to the investors (French and Chinese Governments.)

And that subsidy reversal (from expensive PV, to domestic subsidies beating commercial nuclear) took 10yrs of sizeable global support, v's the 60(ish) years of support for nuclear. Even I didn't see that one coming.

All praise the mighty RE.