[otterley]

So that's what an old-school infomercial translated to the Web looks like:

"We pass the savings onto you! [Just pay $29/year membership fee!]"

(Seriously, though. 180W? That's not a ton of "help" for a typical refrigerator that draws anywhere between 300 and 800W.)

(Also, seriously, though. Most apartment owners and condo HOAs won't allow their residents to put these on their balconies.)

[itsrobreally]

Can confirm, setup a couple hundred watts as a hobby project during the pandemic and built a battery pack - the biggest challenge (other than matching connectors) is finding anything other than just "charging devices" that the thing is practical for - until you get up around 1000W a lot of "normal" stuff is just too hungry.

[SyzygyRhythm]

This just plugs into an outlet and offsets whatever usage you have, though. No need for a battery or matching load. It just subtracts 180 watts from your household usage.

These types of devices are fairly popular in Germany, and maybe other places. For someone like me, with very high peak daytime prices, even a small offset would be valuable, but the full price here seems to be $500, which is too much. No reason it couldn't be much cheaper, though.

[phil21]

Call it 200W, and it would offset say 5 hours a day of that for where I'm at.

Call it 1.5kwh for the entire day being optimistic. This would save me (inclusive of taxes, etc.) roughly $.33/day. Call it $10/mo.

34mo so payback isn't the worst I suppose. Better than I expected to be honest. Probably not worth the hassle factor though since I don't have an ideal place to put such a thing.

I do have an "always on" load of well over 200W in my home, so at least it would offset every watt it generated. I'm not sure how true that is for most folks, as most folks don't run a home lab in their basement.

[kotaKat]

The costs just don't make sense to me given you can only produce a 'maximum' amount of solar power per year and thus will only have a theoretical max savings that might only amount to anywhere between $100-400/year depending on size and system, and some of the plug-in solar systems I've seen have been running upwards of $3000+.

I know I can't justify spending $3k upfront to only offset $25/month at best. I'd rather just turn off a few lights and stop paying for Netflix.

It seems like a large cost for not a lot of power offset that's also unusable when the power goes out (since you can't run untied from the grid).

[epistasis]

Most places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules.

For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer:

https://hub.utahcleanenergy.org/solar-power/for-policy-maker...

[otterley]

> Most places restrict HOAs and apartment owners from ridiculous rules.

That claim is too vague to evaluate.

> For example, Utah, which was a balcony solar pioneer: [link omitted]

The referenced Utah legislation (SB154) does not prevent HOAs from banning balcony solar installations. It restricts only certain bans on rooftop solar installations on detached dwellings. It's important to read the fine print.

The other legislation applies to restrictive deed covenants for new or renewed plats, not lease agreements. Even if they can't prevent condo owners from putting solar panels on their balcony, it doesn't prevent apartment owners from disallowing tenants from doing it. (Utah might have a different law covering that, I don't know.)