On Thursday 25th May, Peter Breger gave us a fascinating detailed account of his experience installing a domestic solar power installation at home – and it’s complicated with many variables! When deciding what type of installation you might have, one very useful tool is the ” PVGIS Online Tool” which provides information about solar radiation and photovoltaic (PV) system performance for any location in Europe and Africa, as well as a large part of Asia and America. https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/pvgis-online-tool_en
With this tool you can calculate how much solar power you are likely to generate from an installation on your roof based on your geographical location, the angle of your roof, whether it faces south, which types of panels you use, how many of them, expected performance at different times of the year etc. Peter took the trouble to enter as much information as he could into the on-line model, and also recorded the actual performance of his system once it was installed – and found that the two matched very well.
However, such installations do not come cheap and payback times in savings on electricity bills may be longer than elderly householders would like to think about!
Most installed solar systems lose power when the mains electricity cuts out. It might be worth spending extra on an installation to ensure that the panels keep on feeding your house with electricity during an Iberdrola power cut, and even perhaps invest in a battery for the nighttime. The way things are going there will be increased demand on the electricity network, with all our electric gadgets and domestic heating and cooling systems. On top of which there’s the rapid phasing in of electric cars which require copious amounts of electricity to charge their batteries. Will the grid be able to meet demand?
If you want to start on the cheap, and you have a sunny balcony – why not try a portable balcony panel ? You can get one at Carrefour for €529 ! …It’s a bit more expensive(€577) from Amazon: https://www.amazon.es/SunneSolar-Monocristalino-Inversor-Preparado-instalarlo/dp/B096XHYM72 Just plug it into the mains and off you go. No expensive installation required.
…and here’s an intelligent balcony system with a battery which is just coming on the market – no idea of the price yet. https://www.ecoflow.com/es/powerstream
The future is sunny!
Reportage by Chris Betterton-Jones – Knowledge junky
References from Peter Breger:
For those interested in more details on the ins and outs of installing small or large systems, with good explanations of do’s and don’ts, this (German) publication may be of interest. It is a collection of articles and tests from 2022/23 in one special edition magazine.
Equally, this book (download is free) gives a lot of details on storage technology used with solar PV systems (although written mentioning Victron technology, it has a lot of general background explanations).