Pardon the stock image. It won’t let me post without one. Curious if anyone here has built or researched a diy balcony solar setup. I’m new to solar, so this seems like a good small scale project to learn on.

If you have built one, what equipment did you use? How did you decide on panel wattage?

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    You should be able to post without an image. The option to upload an image or add a thumbnail will be present anytime you wish to post, but you can leave them blank for a text-only post, which only requires a title (technically you can even leave the Body part blank).

    • EdgarAllenBro@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      1 day ago

      Good to know. I’m not really sure what happened there. The post button was grayed out until I added an image. Next time I’ll try to back out of the post and restart.

  • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 days ago

    Balcony solar that is grid tied is probably not something you want to DIY. The amount of power you can generate probably wouldnt be worth the hoops you’d need to jump through. That’s not including using the smart inverters that plug in (cause that’s not really “diy”).

    Off grid balcony solar isnt super hard. If you have an all-in-one charge controller/battery/inverter (jackery, goal zero, and a million others), you just plug the panels right into it, and you can pull power out the other side with no trouble. That’s also debatably “diy”. Getting a little more advanced than that still isnt too hard.

    https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/12/how-to-build-a-small-solar-power-system/

    Personally, I have a goalzero power station and 300W of panels. I wish I had done a little more research before buying the goalzero, cause I probably would have gone a different route (LFP battery, not NMC) because I care way more about charge cycles than energy density.

    • EdgarAllenBro@slrpnk.netOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      Thanks! That site is super helpful.

      It seems like most of the balcony solar-like set ups would be more pre-made than I’m after. Really I just want a little project that I can learn about solar on and gives me something useful at the end of it. Maybe a direct drive attic vent fan would be more my speed at this point. I’m also open to other ideas if someone has a good beginner project.