Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

As far as I can tell from 5 min on Google, balcony solar is straight up banned in Australia. As in, there are no approved models or installers, and you can't DIY anything electrical without invalidating your home insurance.

A shame, because I'm renting a house, and while I'm obviously not going to invest in rooftop solar, a portable balcony setup I could take with me or easily sell the next time I move would be handy.



You can set up a low voltage DC solar setup + battery yourself, but you aren't allowed to do anything that connects to the grid without the proper licenses/certifications.

But I'd say the reason you can't find product licensed to do it is because the amount of savings to be had with some panels hanging of the balcony is pretty minimal, the difficulty of securing them properly so they aren't ripped off in a storm is pretty high, and no owners corp would allow it just for visual reasons alone.

Australia has an absolute abundance of empty land, no trees and sun raining down on it. Makes more sense to invest in these installations and just wire it in to the grid rather than zip tieing panels to your balcony rails.


AS/NZ standards prohibit these sorts of systems. Even most models of Victron inverters are not "approved" for grid use without an approved external anti-islanding device, which also vary depending on which energy distributer your are connecting to. Apparently Victron got fed up with dealing with CEC and paying the annual fees to be approved.


One option could be to join something like this: https://haystacks.solargarden.org.au/

The big caveat is you have to sign up with their retail partner, the pricing structure is interesting - you aren't actually paid based on what is generated (or at least from memory).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: