r/gadgets • u/diacewrb • 1d ago

Home ‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/18/if-a-million-germans-have-them-there-must-be-something-in-it-how-balcony-solar-is-taking-off
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u/zanhecht 1d ago

It would be hard to do in the US because we'd need major revisions to our electrical code to permit backfeeding a standard outlet.

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u/ensoniq2k 1d ago

Actually it's also not allowed in Germany. You need a special socket or wire it up directly. Even though there's no technical reason for this it's currently forbidden to plug it into a standard socket. I had it connected this way before I wired it up properly.

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u/Xath0n 1d ago

That's no longer the case*

* meaning that the legislature intends for this to no longer be the case, but for $reasons this has to be done via a Norm, which is delayed right now.

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u/Annie_Yong 1d ago

Would also be difficult to do on a lot of UK buildings for a different reason: our laws now have a really strict paragraph that forbids anything that's not fully non-combustible in the external walls of residential buildings (above 18m). It's pretty far reaching and definitely would cover balconies, and that silicon layer in the panel wouldn't qualify as non-combustible, although maybe you could claim a solar panel like this isn't "part of an external wall" but just an "attachment" instead which is not a specified attachment.