[Aiguru31415666]

I have it on my balcony.

Took me a few hours to research and a helping hand to get it installed.

It will pay for itself in 4 years.

No subsidies.

And my balcony has a tree shadow at lunch.

It's just easy to do (plug it into the socket) and done.

400 watt module.

Today I made only 400 watt. Not a lot. It's still enough.

The energy price per kWh is just relatively high. 30-40cent

[deepsummer]

Your utility company subsidizes you.

In the usual contract, you pay an price of 40 cent per kWh, no matter when you use it. But that price is based on a year-round average. Actually, sometimes electricity is super cheap for the utility company, like when the sun is shining in summer and electricity prices go negative. And sometimes it is very expensive, like on dark winter days without sun and wind, when prices are >1 EUR/kWh.

What you can do with balcony solar is skip the cheap summer sun prices (which cost the utility nothing, but they still charge you 40ct), and you still buy at expensive times for 40ct, when it's actually worth much more.

[stephen_g]

That's not a subsidy, that's more like a time-based arbitrage.

[Ekaros]

In short term I think it is workable strategy. But in long term I expect the pricing to move more towards market price direction. Either by purely market or some strange adjustments based on consumption timing. And ofc transfer will go up...

[pjc50]

I don't think this is based on a real analysis of German electricity wholesale prices.