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Comment by rjdj377dhabsn

4 months ago

Those limits are just arbitrary regulations. It's easy to install 10x that on a residential roof.

And we come back to my original point. Residential roof installation is the most expensive way to install solar power. Utility scale solar is easily haf the cost of residential.

  • > Utility scale solar is easily half the cost of residential.

    If it's only half, the problem it's not going to stop residential installs. By the time that utility power gets to them here in Australia it costs about 3 times as much, so they are going to install their rooftop systems anyway.

    I can't speak for elsewhere, but here in Australia residential installs tend to be over provisioned. A small'ish install is 5kW. That generates about 20kWh per day. Typical household consumption is 1/2 that. Newer builds like mine tend to have far more - upwards of 20kW of panels. That's to cater for charging EV's. The result is grid solar installs are getting hammered by roof top solar: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-hit-record-share-...

Balcony solar is installed on a unit-by-unit basis. It isn't 800W per building; it's potentially up to 800W for each unit in an apartment.

  • That's still not a lot. Less than a hairdryer uses.

    • A heavily used hairdryer is typically in use for 5 minutes per day, so a 1500-watt-peak hairdryer might average 5.2 watts. It needs 1500 watts of batteries (say, 3kWh of 0.5C batteries, or 0.4kWh of 4C batteries), not 1500 watts of solar panels.