Europe
News and information from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
view the rest of the comments
Offgrid personal solar systems may improve their appeal? I'm in doubt on inverters costs
Price of inverters have plummeted too, we can get way better inverters now at half the price they cost 3 years ago.
The new ones allow you to continue using your battery when the grid power fails, ours doesn't.
We would be able to get twice the battery and better inverter, and it would still be cheaper if we bought today instead of 3 years ago.
Not a good idea to go off grid here though, because then you can't sell your surplus power. And you would have to calculate with a pretty high amount of surplus power to have reliable power without the grid.
The calculation may look different where you live, for instance if you have more reliable sun than we have. But we have 3 months per year where we can go days without getting any sun at all. And when the sun is highest, we can only utilize about a fourth the capacity of our panels. So here that is completely hopeless. Maybe with a wind turbine it would be possible, but those are next to impossible to get permission to have unless you live I think 3 km from everybody else. And we have 8 neighbors within 100m.
I'm thinking about a common family with a plug-n-play balcony kit, with mediocre solar exposition; I think when you are appealing in this context you win.
AFAIK those systems are pretty cheap already, at least they are in Germany AFAIK, and AFAIK all you need is a modern meter.
But from a balcony you will never be self sustained so you can disconnect from the grid.
In Germany you can buy 1kW solar cells, 2.24kWh battery, inverter and cables for 629โฌ.