I don’t understand why this specific product is being upvoted. It’s not a good deal, it’s a very low power system, and it tries to get you to pay a subscription fee.
This is an ad for a poor deal and I think some are upvoting before they click. I hope nobody buys it before doing some comparison shopping.
They banned importing internet-connected foreign-produced inverters. (https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-423682A1.txt) They are perfectly legal to sell without built-in connectivity, and external monitoring methods aren't prohibited. The concern is that a coordinated network attack on solar inverters could bring down the power grid.
They don't go into details, but check out the Aurora Generator Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Generator_Test Running solar inverters in opposite phase to the grid would likely not immediately damage them, instead they would draw the amount of power they'd normally provide. In some parts of the US, especially during peak summer demand, even a small percentage of solar power doing this could cause a cascading outage, knocking entire multi-state power grids offline. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003)
Granted, this could still happen with compromised US-produced inverters, but it's something we should be paying close attention to and planning around.
Edit: and there it is, the post has been flagged, to be kept off the front page and suppressed from discovery.
Most people in the US don't know that things like this even exist, so it's novel, new, and interesting.
Our media environment and politics have kept us away from broad understanding of current technology and possibilities. The US also has Stockholm-syndrome levels of subservience to HOAs, too, for example. When it comes to clean energy, regulation is assumed to be impossible to change, as is the grid. (But when it comes to energy for data centers, all regulations can be changed, and boy will the grid undergo changes, all billed back to residential ratepayers...)
It's hard to overstate just how bad the US is when it comes to the random person understanding hot-button Fox news topics like EVs and solar and wind and batteries.
> Edit: and there it is, the post has been flagged, to be kept off the front page and suppressed from discovery.
it wasn't flagged because of some nefarious plan to suppress people from knowing about this, it was flagged because it's marketing bullshit. There's lots of really good material out there about DIY solar and this isn't it.
If this plugs into the house wiring through a single standard 120V plug, only half of the plugs in the house would ever draw energy from the solar panel.
Household wiring actually has 2 separate 120V supply lines, out of phase with each other (This is how you can get 240V outlets (ovens, driers)). The 120V lines connect to only one of these two lines, and which one it connects to is determined by what slot the breaker is plugged into at the breaker box.
By EU standards, that is expensive and low power for balcony power. It this US regulatory capture, China import rates, something else, all of the above?
Can confirm, setup a couple hundred watts as a hobby project during the pandemic and built a battery pack - the biggest challenge (other than matching connectors) is finding anything other than just "charging devices" that the thing is practical for - until you get up around 1000W a lot of "normal" stuff is just too hungry.
This just plugs into an outlet and offsets whatever usage you have, though. No need for a battery or matching load. It just subtracts 180 watts from your household usage.
These types of devices are fairly popular in Germany, and maybe other places. For someone like me, with very high peak daytime prices, even a small offset would be valuable, but the full price here seems to be $500, which is too much. No reason it couldn't be much cheaper, though.
Call it 200W, and it would offset say 5 hours a day of that for where I'm at.
Call it 1.5kwh for the entire day being optimistic. This would save me (inclusive of taxes, etc.) roughly $.33/day. Call it $10/mo.
34mo so payback isn't the worst I suppose. Better than I expected to be honest. Probably not worth the hassle factor though since I don't have an ideal place to put such a thing.
I do have an "always on" load of well over 200W in my home, so at least it would offset every watt it generated. I'm not sure how true that is for most folks, as most folks don't run a home lab in their basement.
> Most places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules.
That claim is too vague to evaluate.
> For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer: [link omitted]
The referenced Utah legislation (SB154) does not prevent HOAs from banning balcony solar installations. It restricts only certain bans on rooftop solar installations on detached dwellings. It's important to read the fine print.
The other legislation applies to restrictive deed covenants for new or renewed plats, not lease agreements. Even if they can't prevent condo owners from putting solar panels on their balcony, it doesn't prevent apartment owners from disallowing tenants from doing it. (Utah might have a different law covering that, I don't know.)
The costs just don't make sense to me given you can only produce a 'maximum' amount of solar power per year and thus will only have a theoretical max savings that might only amount to anywhere between $100-400/year depending on size and system, and some of the plug-in solar systems I've seen have been running upwards of $3000+.
I know I can't justify spending $3k upfront to only offset $25/month at best. I'd rather just turn off a few lights and stop paying for Netflix.
It seems like a large cost for not a lot of power offset that's also unusable when the power goes out (since you can't run untied from the grid).
Obviously not, but since the panels are >8x cheaper it's possible to buy 2x the capacity advertised here + an inverter for a one time cost of $200, so about $0.33/watt.
Does any know how these kind of setups work for shared GFCI circuits? Like if I have a couple bathrooms on the same circuit as an outdoor GFCI plug I’d like to use with 1200 watts of panels, is that doable?
I “installed” two APsystems EZ1-LV-NA microinverters at my house in Guatemala this year. It’s easy here because there is effectively zero regulation or monitoring by the power companies.
It was stupidly simple. I laid four giant ~700 W panels flat on my upstairs patio, plugged the MC4 extension cables into the microinverters, and plugged the microinverter into a normal AC extension cord running to a wall outlet. After less than 10 minutes of fiddling with wires, I was generating power.
Moving the giant solar panels was the part that actually took some effort.
---------------------------
I’ve been following these types of systems for a long time, since before people started calling them plug-in or balcony solar. For the longest time, I thought they were just stupid. Paying a premium for an inverter that has lower input and output capacity than a string inverter, can’t be connected to batteries, and can’t generate power when the grid is down seemed obscene to me.
To be honest, I still think they’re kind of dumb. Why can’t microinverters provide a DC tap so that I can also connect them to a battery system?
All that said, as a middle-aged man who has now had to deal with electricians more than a few times, the appeal has become crystal clear. Microinverters basically exist because electricians as a whole are downright awful and rip everyone off.
Oh that's good news. I wrote in to support HB4080 here in Oregon, but it didn't go anywhere during this year's short session, so will hopefully come back around for the session next year.
It seems like the site ought to provide more clarity around that, though.
There is no need to subscribe to any solar power provision. You can buy and install the equipment yourself. If you need an electrician, make that a one-time expense.
I don’t understand why this specific product is being upvoted. It’s not a good deal, it’s a very low power system, and it tries to get you to pay a subscription fee.
This is an ad for a poor deal and I think some are upvoting before they click. I hope nobody buys it before doing some comparison shopping.
Plug-in solar is very new in the US. They just banned all chinese inverters so solar is going to get a lot more expensive anyways.
They banned importing internet-connected foreign-produced inverters. (https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-423682A1.txt) They are perfectly legal to sell without built-in connectivity, and external monitoring methods aren't prohibited. The concern is that a coordinated network attack on solar inverters could bring down the power grid.
They don't go into details, but check out the Aurora Generator Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Generator_Test Running solar inverters in opposite phase to the grid would likely not immediately damage them, instead they would draw the amount of power they'd normally provide. In some parts of the US, especially during peak summer demand, even a small percentage of solar power doing this could cause a cascading outage, knocking entire multi-state power grids offline. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003)
Granted, this could still happen with compromised US-produced inverters, but it's something we should be paying close attention to and planning around.
Edit: and there it is, the post has been flagged, to be kept off the front page and suppressed from discovery.
Most people in the US don't know that things like this even exist, so it's novel, new, and interesting.
Our media environment and politics have kept us away from broad understanding of current technology and possibilities. The US also has Stockholm-syndrome levels of subservience to HOAs, too, for example. When it comes to clean energy, regulation is assumed to be impossible to change, as is the grid. (But when it comes to energy for data centers, all regulations can be changed, and boy will the grid undergo changes, all billed back to residential ratepayers...)
It's hard to overstate just how bad the US is when it comes to the random person understanding hot-button Fox news topics like EVs and solar and wind and batteries.
If you want to share information about balcony solar, submit a neutral link explaining it.
Don’t submit an admit for a product that comes with a subscription.
I don't want to submit information solar, I want to consume it, and in particular I'd like to know about this ad/sales page, whatever it is.
HN is filled with commercial sales pitches, and even encourages self-promotion.
I can't be certain why this one type of product suddenly gets people saying "no ads," but I have my suspicions.
> Edit: and there it is, the post has been flagged, to be kept off the front page and suppressed from discovery.
it wasn't flagged because of some nefarious plan to suppress people from knowing about this, it was flagged because it's marketing bullshit. There's lots of really good material out there about DIY solar and this isn't it.
That seems crazy expensive. In Germany small-self install kits are quite popular. Hitting up amazon.de shows kits for around € 0.3/watt
The US has high tariffs on solar, batteries, and pretty much all the best and cheapest electricity generation technologies.
If this plugs into the house wiring through a single standard 120V plug, only half of the plugs in the house would ever draw energy from the solar panel.
Household wiring actually has 2 separate 120V supply lines, out of phase with each other (This is how you can get 240V outlets (ovens, driers)). The 120V lines connect to only one of these two lines, and which one it connects to is determined by what slot the breaker is plugged into at the breaker box.
The marketing copy on this website looks very suspicious, from the point of view of somebody who actually knows solar systems.
By EU standards, that is expensive and low power for balcony power. It this US regulatory capture, China import rates, something else, all of the above?
It might have to do with our 120V electrical standard. I know our kitchen kettles and irons are lower wattage than European ones.
I miss how fast our German kettle heated water :-(
So that's what an old-school infomercial translated to the Web looks like:
"We pass the savings onto you! [Just pay $29/year membership fee!]"
(Seriously, though. 180W? That's not a ton of "help" for a typical refrigerator that draws anywhere between 300 and 800W.)
(Also, seriously, though. Most apartment owners and condo HOAs won't allow their residents to put these on their balconies.)
Can confirm, setup a couple hundred watts as a hobby project during the pandemic and built a battery pack - the biggest challenge (other than matching connectors) is finding anything other than just "charging devices" that the thing is practical for - until you get up around 1000W a lot of "normal" stuff is just too hungry.
This just plugs into an outlet and offsets whatever usage you have, though. No need for a battery or matching load. It just subtracts 180 watts from your household usage.
These types of devices are fairly popular in Germany, and maybe other places. For someone like me, with very high peak daytime prices, even a small offset would be valuable, but the full price here seems to be $500, which is too much. No reason it couldn't be much cheaper, though.
Call it 200W, and it would offset say 5 hours a day of that for where I'm at.
Call it 1.5kwh for the entire day being optimistic. This would save me (inclusive of taxes, etc.) roughly $.33/day. Call it $10/mo.
34mo so payback isn't the worst I suppose. Better than I expected to be honest. Probably not worth the hassle factor though since I don't have an ideal place to put such a thing.
I do have an "always on" load of well over 200W in my home, so at least it would offset every watt it generated. I'm not sure how true that is for most folks, as most folks don't run a home lab in their basement.
Most places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules.
For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer:
https://hub.utahcleanenergy.org/solar-power/for-policy-maker...
> Most places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules.
That claim is too vague to evaluate.
> For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer: [link omitted]
The referenced Utah legislation (SB154) does not prevent HOAs from banning balcony solar installations. It restricts only certain bans on rooftop solar installations on detached dwellings. It's important to read the fine print.
The other legislation applies to restrictive deed covenants for new or renewed plats, not lease agreements. Even if they can't prevent condo owners from putting solar panels on their balcony, it doesn't prevent apartment owners from disallowing tenants from doing it. (Utah might have a different law covering that, I don't know.)
The costs just don't make sense to me given you can only produce a 'maximum' amount of solar power per year and thus will only have a theoretical max savings that might only amount to anywhere between $100-400/year depending on size and system, and some of the plug-in solar systems I've seen have been running upwards of $3000+.
I know I can't justify spending $3k upfront to only offset $25/month at best. I'd rather just turn off a few lights and stop paying for Netflix.
It seems like a large cost for not a lot of power offset that's also unusable when the power goes out (since you can't run untied from the grid).
Just for comparison buying solar panels off craigslist is about $0.20/watt.
Can you just plug the panel into an outlet?
Obviously not, but since the panels are >8x cheaper it's possible to buy 2x the capacity advertised here + an inverter for a one time cost of $200, so about $0.33/watt.
Does any know how these kind of setups work for shared GFCI circuits? Like if I have a couple bathrooms on the same circuit as an outdoor GFCI plug I’d like to use with 1200 watts of panels, is that doable?
Anyone here done this? Either with Brightsaver or another balcony solar system?
What was your experience if so?
I “installed” two APsystems EZ1-LV-NA microinverters at my house in Guatemala this year. It’s easy here because there is effectively zero regulation or monitoring by the power companies.
It was stupidly simple. I laid four giant ~700 W panels flat on my upstairs patio, plugged the MC4 extension cables into the microinverters, and plugged the microinverter into a normal AC extension cord running to a wall outlet. After less than 10 minutes of fiddling with wires, I was generating power.
Moving the giant solar panels was the part that actually took some effort.
---------------------------
I’ve been following these types of systems for a long time, since before people started calling them plug-in or balcony solar. For the longest time, I thought they were just stupid. Paying a premium for an inverter that has lower input and output capacity than a string inverter, can’t be connected to batteries, and can’t generate power when the grid is down seemed obscene to me.
To be honest, I still think they’re kind of dumb. Why can’t microinverters provide a DC tap so that I can also connect them to a battery system?
All that said, as a middle-aged man who has now had to deal with electricians more than a few times, the appeal has become crystal clear. Microinverters basically exist because electricians as a whole are downright awful and rip everyone off.
I went with On demand Instant Solar. They are great and ship very fast,. The customer support is awesome.
I went with On Denmand Instant Solar. They ship very fast and have great customer service.
How does this work legally? I thought balcony solar was only legal in Utah in the US?
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/states-passing-ba...
I think we're up to 8 states now?
Oh that's good news. I wrote in to support HB4080 here in Oregon, but it didn't go anywhere during this year's short session, so will hopefully come back around for the session next year.
It seems like the site ought to provide more clarity around that, though.
This is an ad. Just a straight up ad posted to HN and upvoted.
True, but I am upvoting it just to get discussion on the general topic (which seems to be happening).
Ads have always been allowed on HN, as far as I know. What, is HN going to be anti-commerce now?
There is no need to subscribe to any solar power provision. You can buy and install the equipment yourself. If you need an electrician, make that a one-time expense.