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I’m going to be testing a plug-in solar system on my house, and as I’ve researched the best way to set it up, I’ve realized that some limitations will have to be solved before this is widely adopted in the U.S.
Yesterday I went to pick up a few panels at my local Green Tech Renewables to test with my new plug-in solar inverter, and we spent most of the time I was there talking about a problem we’re both seeing.
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We interchangeably call plug-in solar “balcony solar,” but at the moment, there are only a few solutions for actually mounting these panels to balconies, and no widely available standard.
That’s a big problem. Solar panels can weigh between 30 and 50 lbs., and they have sharp corners. If people are going to be mounting them on apartment balconies, we need to know beyond any reasonable doubt that they are securely mounted. We don’t want someone four stories below getting taken out by a falling solar panel.
I personally live in a home that has a lot of shade in all areas except the roof, but I’m not ready to commit to mounting the panels on my roof.
There are a few areas I could lean them against things, but then they’re just sitting out in the open, vulnerable to the elements and theft.
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Eight states have signed plug-in solar into law:
Colorado
Maine
Maryland
Utah
Virginia
Connecticut
Vermont
New Hampshire
Two more states are just waiting for the governor’s signature:
New Jersey
New York
Legalization of plug-in solar is moving way faster than the marketplace.
The products have not kept up. Here are the major problems for anyone who actually has a balcony:
1. Kits you can buy don’t include mounting hardware.
There are kits on the marketplace, but the offered wattage isn’t going to make much of a difference in your power bill, and most of them don’t include mounting hardware.
Bright Saver’s solution is a good example.
The one from Bright Saver’s website shows the panel leaning against a pole, which is totally fine if you live in a home and have a fenced-in backyard.
But if you live on the ground floor of an apartment, that would leave the panel and inverter vulnerable to theft.
I don’t want to knock Bright Saver. They’re an amazing nonprofit that sells these components at cost, and you should absolutely buy from them. But if you live in an apartment on a floor above the ground floor, you should probably wait.
2. There is no standard mount.
If you look for balcony solar mounts on the internet, you’ll see a scattered selection of railing clamps, parapet hooks, and ballasted tripods, mostly built to meet general wind-load guidelines rather than anything balcony-specific.
Why it matters
Plug-in solar is awesome, but the economics of it only work if people are able to buy kits and easily install them on their own. We will only have the privilege of buying kits and easily installing them on our own if there’s repeatable proof that anyone can do so safely.
These are not unsolvable problems. Europe has solved them, and has widely available products on the marketplace that you can buy in big box stores. But these mounting solutions aren’t yet widely available in the U.S.
There’s going to be a big opportunity for companies to bring mounting solutions to market that are easy for people to install on their own.
But if those solutions aren’t available, and people mount panels to apartment balconies in unsafe ways and cause accidents first, it’s going to be much more difficult to standardize this market in the U.S.
Coming soon: Our interview with the guy who fixes these problems for a living in Germany
I sat down with Craig Morris, executive director of Germany’s plug-in solar association.
We got into the mounting problem (German forums are full of people posting photos of their balcony asking what bracket to buy), the one piece of legislation he thinks every US state needs before anything else, his specific worry about what UL might do next, the fix for apartment buildings that solves the condo problem and the electrician-cost problem at the same time, and what a kilowatt-hour from one of these systems actually costs.
He’s also refreshingly blunt that Germany got plenty of things wrong and Americans shouldn’t copy all of it.
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Sources:
Accelerating plug-in solar adoption with the most affordable balcony solar kit — Bright Saver
Is Plug-In Solar Legal in My State? Full 50-State Tracker — PlugInSolarHub
Safety Considerations for Plug-In Photovoltaic (PIPV) Systems for Residential Use — UL Solutions, IAEI Magazine
How to build a balcony solar kit to UL certification — pv magazine USA
Plug-in solar takes step forward with first national safety certification — Environment America
Plug In Balcony Solar Power Moves from Hack to Household — IEEE Spectrum
Solar Panel Mounting Brackets, Hooks & Balcony Kits — Solar IQ USA
Not All Hook Systems Work for Multi-Unit Installations — WANHOS
DIN VDE V 0126-95 and the German plug-in solar framework — PromptQuorum
New Jersey legislature unanimously passes plug-in solar bill — pv magazine USA
