[sgc]

But isn't that just because of legislation? As far as I can tell the system could just as easily throw a switch, test to make sure the switch was thrown, and then safely power locally. I know in California this is law, but I have never heard of a very good reason why it is technically difficult or inherently more dangerous to "air gap" your local power at the building rather than at the battery/power source.

[bonestamp2]

Agreed. When I lived in Wisconsin the power would go out frequently during storms. Immediately I'd hear some neighbor's natural gas generators kick in and then a few minutes later I'd hear a few neighbors fire up their gasoline generators.

In both cases, they would flip over their home (or a sub panel) to the alternate power source (and disconnect it from the upstream grid). I looked into these systems and the natural gas ones could do this automatically using a kit available at Home Depot, and the gas generators required a manual switch, but were still very simple.

I looked into Solar in California and when I found out that most people can't use their systems during blackouts I asked about these generator systems that switch over and they basically said they had not seen equipment that could it and they didn't believe it was allowed anyway.

[bzbarsky]

Solar is different from a generator, in that a generator is already producing AC, and as long as it produces a reasonable frequency and waveform you're good. Solar produces DC, which you then need to convert to AC, and the inverters that are typically installed are not able to do their own waveform shaping, depending on the grid to do it for them. It's possible to get inverters that handle this correctly, but they're more expensive, so typical home solar installs don't use them.

[sgc]

Or is it a horse and cart problem? Since there is legislation against it, there is not a demand, and prices have stayed high to sell them as "off grid" tech only? Most anybody would spend $500 extra on a 30k system for guaranteed power during blackouts.

[bzbarsky]

There is no legislation against it where I am (Massachusetts), and there is still very limited demand for it because of the pricing.

> Most anybody would spend $500 extra on a 30k system for guaranteed power during blackouts.

To be clear, to get "guaranteed power during blackouts" out of solar, you need both a more expensive inverter ($1k or so last I checked) and batteries ($5-15k last I checked). If you're OK power only when it's sunny _and_ a blackoutm you might be able to do just the more expensive inverter, maybe. I'm not actually sure whether that work without a battery sink for your unused current.

[sgc]

Any inverter is expensive. I am currently pricing out a small system and just found out today the battery ready inverters don't cost more. In fact I am going without batteries due to a niche use case, but the inverter will be battery ready just because it (SolarEdge) is the best deal overall for the system. You are right about battery cost, but just having one that can get you (frugally) through the night would be a world different than just being shafted.

As to battery requirement, I can't see how attaching a wire to a panel would cause it to burn up. The wire would charge and then it would be the same thing as if the panel was disconnected with the same amount of latent charge in the panel.

[bonestamp2]

> I'm not actually sure whether that work without a battery sink for your unused current.

What happens to unused current now when the panels are disconnected during a blackout?

[bzbarsky]

Nothing, since they are disconnected, so there's a voltage across the gap but not enough to spark. And you don't care precisely what the voltage is, because there's nothing happening with it.

But if you don't disconnect them, now you are maintaining a voltage across whatever your load is, but that voltage depends, for solar panels, on the current being pulled from them, as I understand. And you need to maintain the voltage in some nominal range. Maybe it all works out, but I'd have to do a lot of digging to be sure...

[jumpingmice]

There isn't any. That's not how electric current works. If you leave a disconnected solar panel out in the sunlight it doesn't explode or whatever.