What a strange take.

This is not so much a policy applied from the top, but requested from the bottom. People want to contribute to the transition, and balcony solar installs are a cheap and simple way to do this.

I do see it as the result of policy applied from the top, the policy that resulted in 2x household electricity prices compared to the US (which amounts to 3x difference if you adjust for median household income).

I replied in another thread but I still remember how in my childhood all the ordinary people had to grow potatoes. The state didn't order them to, it just created food shortages that's all. You can say it was voluntary, "not so much a policy applied from the top".

Coincidentally, CO2 emissions per capita in the US are also about 2 times that of Germany.

This is assuming people don’t want to go net zero, and people not understanding that going there requires change, which will be costly. I‘d argue there is a majority in Germany supporting the transition to green energy, accepting higher prices as a result.

I don't think that this is comparable. People who struggle with their electricity bills can not afford balcony solar. It has a ROI of a few years with a (low) but comparably large one time upfront cost.

With potatoes you only really pay with your time.

These are mostly limited time and budget offers, not generally available for everyone in Germany all the time.

The thing about balcony solar is that there are no 3rd party costs. Just the time you need to install it on your own.

I mean, you could pay someone to do it for you, but most people will be able to do it on their own.

This being Germany, you actually are supposed to register every panel in a central database. So the utilities know where generation is happening. This is for proper solar installs as well as for balcony solar.

I have a proper setup on my roof, and installed a 2kW balcony setup (2kWp panels mixed with an inverter limited to 800W) at my in-laws place.

Both are registered in the central database. I got a new power meter for mine. But it seems my in-laws are to keep their old power meter for a while, which occasionally just turns backwards, whenever they produce more than they consume.

You loose performance at noon/summer, when you are likely to produce over your demand anyway.

But during winter/rainy days, when you are limited to diffuse light, they deliver the same output.

The point is that panels are so dead cheap now, that efficiency of orientation is no longer an issue.

Approximately how much does a panel generate from diffuse light compared to direct sunlight?

I‘d say around 10%+.

Over a whole month, peak summer production here is 1.4MWh, winter is 0.14MWh.

Thanks. That's not great: I need more energy in winter...

Well, if you have tests with 100+ lines of such explicitness, it becomes really hard to see the high level picture of „what is tested here“.

As usually, there is a balance to be found.

To be fair, the US governments of the last 25 years have all been contributing to the current state of affairs in terms of eroding the rule of (international) law.

Which is all the more reason to speak out against it vociferously and absolutely, rather than caveat it with “even though our government has been doing this for the past quarter century”. Let’s not aid in the barbarism.

Really like the idea, but my house alone has roughly 16 MWh/a heat consumption. Of which half gets consumed November through January.

So this system could supply 12 houses? Shows the importance of proper insulation, which is still on our todo list.

Sweden seems to have some of the highest "Electricity consumption per dwelling" (https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-secto...) in Europe, and sits at 10 MWh, which makes sense, it's a very cold country but with very well isolated houses in general :)

It sounds to me like you're likely an outlier here, for curiosities sake, where do you live?

16 MWh of electricity/year isn’t really an outlier for an electrically heated (via efficient heat pumps) house in Sweden either.

Your number above probably includes apartments and houses heated using district heating, e.g. from incinerating forest industry waste products.

Germany, and these are numbers from our gas heater. But the house is almost 50 years old and not insulated to current standards (yet).

We got a heatpump this year, going to be interesting to see how this changes things.

Cooling needs tend to correlate with the availability of solar energy. While heating especially far north does not so much.

Because they are not atomic bodies?