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What are ways Renters (of a house) can get into alternative energy?
(lemmywinks.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Am a renter. Recently got two solar panels installed, maxing out at about 600 watts. It's called a balcony power plant and you essentially just plug it into an ordinary outlet.
Seconded, same here, though if OP lives in the US chances are that's illegal.
However, OP, it's still worth a try imho if you have a way of doing it semi-stealthily. I got four used 220Wp panels, a used DC to ac converter and then plugged that right into an outlet. Now when the sun shines, we generate between 2-4kWh per day, which is usually used right up by appliances and chargers. We figure we'll break even in 3-4 years, but that's a bit skewed because of high electricity prices here on Germany and the low upfront costs of getting everything used and then installing it on our slanted sunroom roof conveniently facing southwest
Why would that be illegal?
The line workers would not be aware of power coming from the load side and therefore may accidentally work on a live line and die.
Most rooftop solar that plugs into the grid is set up to switch off if power goes out for this reason.
This is mostly and educated (from a solar class years ago) guess.
This is right. A proper system has a transfer switch that prevents back feeding the grid if it’s down. There’s also a safety aspect in that supplying power to the branch circuit in this way bypasses the overcurrent protection, so one could potentially be loading that circuit with 5 A on top of its rated load and cause significant damage.
If a person wants to offset their electricity at this small scale, better to have it powering a shed or charging power tool batteries. Won’t get as good a return, but you’d never get a return on a permitted grid tied system at that scale either.
Would you not have to get a proper switch installed? We have a diesel generator in our house (countryside, unreliable power) and we had to get a big isolater switch, so when the switch is set to generator, nothing can go back into the grid.
Could you elaborate on the setup you used? I am in a similar boat and thinking about doing this.