alt Hacker NewsSo 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.)
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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...
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).
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.