[timdiggerm]

> Our electricity is unmetered and included in our rent. My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system

I don't understand. These systems just plug into wall outlets. The big difference is that, instead of saving yourself money, you'd be saving your landlady money on the bill.

[MisterTea]

Agreed. It's just a sub panel off the main. Could be 10 sub panels deep and it wouldn't play havoc with anything. The inverter syncs with the line frequency then boosts its voltage just enough to see it push current into the grid which is a few hundred mV. I would even hazard a guess that the impedance between the panels is enough to say that the current is likely being pulled directly by the closest loads: the tenant's loads.

[bell-cot]

> I don't understand...

I'm thinking that the landlady's "NO!" is based on: (1) You can't save yourself any money by doing this, so why are you interested?, and (2) Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.

[embedding-shape]

> Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.

What wiring? Literally connect the setup to the regular power outlet, no fuzzing with wires or otherwise, probably any human who've connected some electrical gadget/device to a socket before could get these solar setups going in a couple of minutes.

[dave78]

Can't there can be over-current issues if you are not using a dedicated wall outlet for backfeeding the solar?

Consider a situation where the plugged-in solar inverter is capable of providing 15 amps into the circuit, but so is the breaker feeding the circuit from the panel. If you plug in something that can consume 30 amps, it will be able to do so by pulling 15 amps from each source without tripping the breaker, so you can end up with 30 amps traveling in your building wiring that is only sized for 15.

At least that's how I understand it. I don't know if any of the grid-tied inverters that can plug into a wall have some way of detecting and compensating for this. Clearly other countries have been able to come to a decision to allow it. I vaguely remember someone explaining that the 230V systems in Europe somehow mitigate the issue but I don't remember how.

[bell-cot]

> What wiring?

If you've got normal residential power outlets, then you've got wiring inside the walls. Those wires are sized for the number of amps that the individual circuit's fuse or breaker allows, plus some limited safety margin.

Depending on hidden-in-the-wall details of how a circuit's wiring is run, and where you plug in panels and electrical loads, it might be quite easy to overload those wires - without blowing the fuse or tripping the breaker.

Overloaded wires can get very hot, and electrical fires starting inside walls really is a thing.

EDIT: Adding https://www.ul.com/insights/safety-considerations-plug-photo...

[nozzlegear]

The landlady probably didn't know that.

[embedding-shape]

Yeah, so I guess when both the renter and the landlord doesn't understand the solution (or renter does understand, but didn't explain properly), it'll be a hard sell indeed.

[ButlerianJihad]

> A solar backpack is a backpack

Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry to muddy the waters, but the solar backpack was an experiment unrelated to my request to place actual solar panels on the balcony.

I would say that it is not out of ignorance that my landlady denied my request. Rather, when you're dealing with tenants who live in an apartment along with hundreds of other tenants living in identical apartment units, you become quite averse to any unique snowflake situations like this.

The maintenance crew is really good at maintaining a fleet of refrigerators, toilets, and ranges that are the same model and hook up in the same way. They offer a standard set of appliances and fixtures that are provided in each unit, and they are serviced uniformly! Imagine if you had a fleet of 500 Supermicro 1U servers, and one of your colocation clients wanted to hook up a custom Ethernet switch made in Outer Mongolia. You'd probably say "no" too.

Regardless of how these panels hook up to the "grid" inside here, it would be nonstandard. The cord itself would snake through the door, onto the floor, somehow, without a dedicated conduit, and it'd be subject to damage, and the door would never close properly. The panels themselves would cover and conceal some part of the railing, and that is considered unsightly and unwanted; they don't want tenants up there with concealed balconies, much less clothes or junk hanging off of them.

The uniformity and conformity of each unit is key. It's like living in an HOA. When we sign the lease, we agree to keep our exteriors neat, tidy, and uniform. There are no flags or signs or stickers that we can put outside. It reduces controversy as well as easing the burden of maintenance and cleaning.

Many years ago, I was renting a very modern 2BR unit and I decided that one of the rooms really needed a ceiling fan (it was a hot summer in a chilly climate!) so I went to Home Depot, purchased a kit, and installed the ceiling fan where a dome light had been. I didn't... ask anyone... and I have no electrician's expertise, nor did I check whether the structure could support it. It must've been quite a surprise when they found it after I moved out!