How Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
How Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
Meet balkonkraftwerk, the simple technology putting solar power in the hands of renters and nudging Germany toward its clean energy goals.
Yess, the new regulations are awesome! Especially the recent simplification of the MaStR (Marktstammdatenregister) System has made everything easier for anyone involved.
But... just a heads up, if you don't register your balcony panel, we can and do find you using satellite pictures 🔫🙂You have to declare that you have a solar panel to the government?
If it can feed back to the grid, it can be a safety issue for electrical workers. Having them know about this stuff before they mess with lines is the safe way to do it.
Yup, the reason is that undocumented solar panels plugged into the Grid could cause seriously dangerous power spikes and throw off calculations on how much Suppliers need to feed into the Grid. So the only panels that don't have to be declared and registered with MaStR are ones on top of cars and ones that are so remote that you couldn't plug them in in any case (but Germany has basically no places remote enough to meet that criteria)
Hmm interesting. What about solar panels that aren't connected to the grid? Can you register them as such?
I have no intention of backfeeding into the grid but want to power a home battery with a solar panel or two.
Solar panels that cannot be connected to the grid don't have to be declared, but it is based on ability, not intention. So a solar panel so far away from civilization that you physically couldn't connect it is fine, but if it's at your house and you could connect it, then you have to register it. (Registration is a 5min online form though, it's very hassle-free for a system that the German Government came up with lol)
Are there any good quality and relatively inexpensive microinverters for the U.S. grid? I'm affraid of the ones I see on amazon.
Plenty if you don’t want grid tied, otherwise your local utility probably has an list of the ones they’ll accept somewhere. There is a list of things an inverter will have to be certified to be able to meet for grid tied such as anti-islanding requirements, and in this case i’m afraid you’re almost certainly better off to be going with a reseller the inverter manufacturer actually recommends than playing Amazon roulette.
From my understanding here it tends to be easier to just stay off the grid for very small systems, either by just plugging in a few panels to a battery and small dc to ac inverter(with appropriately rated fuses between all connections) or else getting an automatic transfer switch and treating the whole thing like a generator.
That being said RVs and camper vans are a thing here, and there may be some more plug and play systems in that direction but small 12v systems are a bit out of my wheelhouse.
Not grid tie like the ones in the article.