I just found out about "balcony solar" which is, by and large, illegal in the US (web.archive.org)

submitted 10 months ago by regul@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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Apparently this is all the rage in Germany (and China) where you can buy a kit at the supermarket for 500-600EUR and then you simply hang the solar panels over your balcony and plug them in to a wall outlet to reduce your net usage.

I was trying to do research on why we don't have this in the US and it doesn't seem like there are any particularly good reasons for it other than sclerotic response to "new" technology.

Seems like an incredibly cool idea to make apartment dwelling even more sustainable.

non-archive link: https://www.dw.com/en/mini-plug-in-solar-panels-are-they-worth-it/a-66240262

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[-] regul@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago

If the (smart) inverter is on the line that connects into the wall outlet it could easily stop the flow in the event that it doesn't detect anything from the grid across its terminals. I expect this is a solved problem, but like I said, I just found out about this tech.