this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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I mean, it makes sense to me that consumers can't be pumping energy into the grid with no way to cut it off, but I'm not a lineman or some sort of civil engineer or whatever.
But if I were a lawmaker, I'd be on the phone with the Germans, who have 1.2M of these connected, and figuring out if and how they're doing it safely. But lawmakers seem to be somehow incapable of reaching out to people who know fuck all about anything.
It is more than just the concern around back-feeding the grid. These simple balcony setups connect to your home grid via a single outlet. Most US outlets/circuits are 15 AMP or roughly 1500 watts max capacity. These single circuits can only carry that much current total at any one time so if you have it loaded up with incoming power AND use anything else on the circuit at the same time ... no bueno. To make this setup work best/safely you would ideally want a dedicated circuit for it which is basically non-existent today.
The safety issues really do need to be addressed because the folks most likely to use these systems are apartment dwellers and I don't think anyone wants to increase fire risk in these scenarios.
That's why they're limited to 1200 watts.
1200 incoming + 1 hairdryer at the same time equals overloaded circuit though.
That's now how that works. You got 1200 coming in and 1200 going out, so the solar would just power the dryer directly.
I think the risk is more that someone has a 15A-rated outlet on a 15A circuit breaker, plugs a solar panel into one socket and then a power strip with 30A of space heaters into the other socket. Breaker doesn't trip because the main panel is only providing 15A, but the outlet lights on fire.
Not sure why that isn't a problem in places these are more common.
(this is the same reason that big solar systems require an oversized busbar on your main panel)
Ah, that is a good point. I wonder how they're mitigating that.
breaker masking