Post #2403413

2026-04-14 09:22 UTC

@notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com Solar on suburban homes is a funny thing. At the latitude of Amsterdam, it can lead to demand evaporation for 7-8 months of the year if the home has a sufficiently sized battery. The solar from a typical suburban home can carry 10-15 kWp of solar, leading to 7-11 MWh production per year in east/west configuration and 13-16 MWh production in a south facing ideal deployment. There is a 1:10 production difference between January and June, though, so the household likely needs to buy power Nov-Feb, but will likely break even or almost break even in Mar, and not consume any power from the grid in April to September, and begin to load from the grid lightly on October. Heating with a heat pump will have them but 3-4 MWh during winter. (Numbers based on our 75 kWh/(year and qm) home, and our demand, but they seem to be applicable on a more general scale, too). For power producers this means they have to supply power to homes like ours only for winter. Fortunately wind + battery can actually do that without CO2.

Replies (4)

@datenhalde@nrw.social 2026-04-14 09:44

@isotopp@infosec.exchange Nachfrageverpuffung, oder wie heißt das auf deutsch? #solar #autarkie @notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com

Open ##2403414
@Disputatore@masto.pt 2026-04-14 10:09

@isotopp@infosec.exchange @notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com but batteries are terribly expensive. I have 5 solar panels and I've completely recovered that investment in less than two years because they were subsidised.They would cover half my daily needs if I could use all the production. So I've considered buying batteries, but there's no way I can recover that investment in a reasonable timeframe. At least not with the current electricity cost, which is very low.

Open ##2403415
@xot@someone.elses.computer 2026-04-14 17:05

@isotopp@infosec.exchange @notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com Roughly corresponds to what I am seeing in my home, with a recent heat pump and 18 year old solar panels. No battery yet, but if we had, we would also not consume any power from the grid from mid April to early October.

Open ##2403419
@emma@orbital.horse 2026-04-15 00:24

@isotopp@infosec.exchange @notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com here in the States, white reactionary suburbanites in Texas cover their roofs with solar and sell power back to the utilities there, but in the cities where real people live, we have people who can't afford their electric bills, and their landlords could care less about solar because they don't pay for household electricity. Distributed power needs to work at the neighborhood level and prioritize the needs of the dispossessed.

Open ##2403420