 Balcony Power Plant 4
That would have been our system, delivered today. Everything okay? Unfortunately, no. They have generously allowed themselves 10 hours to deliver the system. Someone had to be home from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
At least the truck with the big tailgate pulled up at 10 a.m.
And why can't we provide you with pictures of the individual components yet? Because the heavily loaded pallet was, unfortunately, secured with just a simple plastic strap on the side. It probably happened right in the
first turn, it lost the balance and tumbled over.
Before I could get my hands on the camera, the driver had already put it back upright. Lucky for me, I didn't take DHL up on their offer to just have the pallet delivered to my parcel of land without me being there.
So I was able to refuse the delivery. After all, the solar panels are made of glass on both the front and back. You should have seen the distance they’d 'traveled' in that truck before they crashed into the other
side. Too bad, looks like we won't be able to install it this weekend.
And as is our way, and since we happen to have a broken inverter right in the middle of all this commotion, our thoughts turned to what the situation might be like in five years. Then the utility company won't pay us a single
cent for our wonderful solar power.
Buying an inverter for an existing system was not as easy as we thought it would be. I once ordered the wrong item completely, but luckily the company contacted me early on to correct it. I've since received a refund through
eBay.
Of course, we get frustrated every time a sunny day goes by without us making use of the sun’s energy. Because we still don't know exactly how we could have avoided making a second bad purchase. It would have been
impossible to buy at auction, and new goods are often not priced directly.
When we specified our inverter on eBay, we came across a used one that was actually even more powerful. It probably fits perfectly, including the mounting and connections. But why would you buy something like that
again, when it’s already let you down twice?
Because it's especially cheap? It is, but that's not the reason. According to our plans, we’ll need this device for exactly five more years, and then no longer. Why? Because this entire solution — with a maximum of 800 W
and using only a single phase — is not optimal.
What we're already raving about is a three-phase inverter. That should allow us to somehow connect the old system to the new one as well. By the way, it’s not enough to simply connect the old modules in series to bring
them to roughly the same voltage and then connect them in parallel.
We will then need a controller that switches all collectors on together. If we include the bifacial portion, that would be approximately 5 kW peak. Others have paid considerably more for it. After all, our old system has long
since been written off. You can already generate more than 2 kW today.
By the way, 'bifacial' means that the collectors can also absorb energy from the back, for example, through reflection off a white-painted house wall. We’ll be installing three of the collectors on a metal roof that we hope will
be just as reflective.
So the inverter we just bought will have a limited lifespan with us — though hopefully an accident-free one — and at €224 including shipping, it’s not too big of a risk. Unfortunately, it won't be delivered until tomorrow. At
least we'll be able to focus entirely on it now that the new system was damaged.
By the way, you can also buy a system like the one we purchased online for about half the price and pick it up yourself at various locations in Germany. However, it only has about 10 kWh of storage capacity.
That wouldn't be too bad. But it also lacks an outlet for emergency power.
A really interesting device that will hopefully make our car’s short trips completely independent of the grid. The dream could come true, but it still needs to be successfully tested. We will discuss this topic in the next
chapter.
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