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My North-East facing balcony doesn't get enough sun light. But it's an interesting idea.
By putting the solar panel at a 90 degree angle though it is much less efficient than e.g. a 45 degree angle.
Less efficient than not having them?
Wrong question. The right question is: is the solar panel able to be CO2 neutral (at least) or CO2 negative. We don't get anything out of it if producing the solar panel costs more CO2 emissions than it saves by producing electricity.
Before you ask: I don't know the answer. I was looking into this thread in hope to find it.
To be a positive impact, they just need to be less carbon intensive thans the energy they displace. According to the first results on google, (presumably utility-scale) solar is about 12 times less carbon intensive than natural gas and 20 times compared to coal. So as long as you're replacing base load and not utility solar, balcony solar could be as much as 10 times less efficient and still come out a net positive.
Keep in mind also that these numbers keep improving as solar panel manufacturing becomes more efficient and starts using more green energy itself over the coming decades
Most people don't care about being CO2 neutral. The real question is what is the ROI? Will the panel save that person money. If it takes 50 years to pay for itself, I'd say that's bad. 10 years is more standard. 5 years I say it's a no brainer. Though I suppose you can also argue value for utility, if that is giving her the ability to power something off grid that would be worth something.
In Germany those panels usually pay themselves after about 5 years depending on the price of the necessary electronics (don't forget the electricity meter!) and if there's also a battery.
You don't need a smart meter for this, just plug and play. If seen offers for complete sets from as low as 250€ in supermarkets, so almost everyone can get one and start saving some power.
I hung a solar panel vertically on my fence one time. It was facing west rather than south, but I was only getting about 3-4 watts on my 100 watt panel under the best conditions.
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The most have a 45 degree angle
Might be most efficient when power is in higedt demands, in the morning and evenings when everyone is using power at home.
That pic is great, haha. Woman looks so smug.
Isn't wind energy better on balconies?
Hmm no,
- first oft all: noise. Wind turbines have moving parts, that attached to a building or even worse attached to a balcony creates noise in the whole building. Imagine the rattling of 5-6 ~10 year old, bad maintained, wind turbines.
- Second: the energy output is rather low. A 1,2KW turbine is about 1.2m/3.9feet big. That's in spherical, cause it has to be able to rotate by wind direction.
- Third: balconies are preferred to not have wind, but sun.
- And last but not least: blades. Every windturbine form factor has (fast) moving blades. If it's reachable someone is going to stick a finger in it.
If you're living more suburban and have a windy detached place to setup a small windturbine that's an option. On the garage or shed for example.
Sadly really small wind turbines are really ineffective and not worth the investment until you have a really windy balcony. If you only have a few square meters solar is the only choice.
But I'd still love to have a small windmill in my garden.
If everyone puts wind turbines on the balconies they might end up blowing the building over
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I'm sure this is a good thing, but considering the vast majority of Germans haven't figured out screens on windows I'm not sure the appeal to authority in the title has the desired effect.
We have fly screens in our windows. Windows which can be tilted btw.
You also have the best shutters ever.
i mean, it'll work. You should probably just collectively work together to install a solar array on the roof of the apartment instead, assuming it doesn't already have one.
Granted this is in the EU, so ideal solar tracking is kinda just, fucked. It matters more closer to the equator, because you can get significantly more power from pointing them correctly, and tracking, if you decide to use that.
Rooftop solar has a huge upfront cost and requires the building owner/operator do it. It’s out of the control of individuals and out of their price range.
Balcony solar is completely under your control, within most people’s budget, and you simply plug it in
While tracking might let you collect more energy, you also lose more of your balcony, and you’re back to making the install expensive and complicated. Not worth it
yeah and uh, idk if you noticed, generally more than one person lives in an apartment building, it's about as good as it's going to get unless you're installing solar from tax payer money, or utility company money.
While tracking might let you collect more energy, you also lose more of your balcony, and you’re back to making the install expensive and complicated. Not worth it
dont use tracking on a balcony??? Also not all tracking setups are expensive and complicated, the entire reason you would want to do them is to greatly increase the total amount of power production throughout the day, and you can very easily calculate the complexity cost, maintenance cost, and additional install cost over to the potential saved/produced value of the array post installation.
I mean if you're doing 2 axis tracking, sure it's probably more expensive, but one axis tracking is still reasonably effective, especially if you're in a decent spot and able to take advantage of it. The other option is installing more panels total, and when you're space limited, that's going to become a constraint.
Why are you cooking for yourself at home? It would be more efficient, if you organize a shared kitchen in the house and each evening a different party cooks for everyone in the house.
in an apartment specifically? Why would you build your own house when you can build a large building and then live in segmented housing blocks within that building?
It's literally just breaking the entire idea of apartment block housing for the purposes of providing less usable, less functional solar power. If you want to do your own install on top of an existing install on the apartment, go ahead, nobody is going to stop you, but you would see more returns if you managed to install solar directly on the roof of the building in the first place. Economy of scale is going to be advantageous for you in literally any case, that's just the truth.
Hell yeah. I do Thursdays and man people remember to come to me on Thursday.
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Home solar indicates a massive management failure of public utilities. If it is more cost effective and more pleasant to generate your own electricity without any economies of scale, something is very wrong.
Source: I live in California where the “public” utility is an absolute disaster that charges $.60-$.70/kW/hr so anybody who can afford the upfront cost of solar has done so.
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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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