German blogger Peter Piksa just posted about his new installation of 1 (one) solar panel at the window of his rented home. For a cost of a couple of hundred Euros he has built himself a small island solar installation, without a roof, without even bothering about the feed-in tariff, and with some problems with a very noisy inverter.
Thanks to this tweet by Michael Pucher for the link.
The general idea is to get a couple of Wh stored into an old car battery while he is at work, and power the computer in the evening with that.
I like his approach. Never mind the cost. At less than 500 Euro for the whole installation, who cares? He gets some energy independence and some experience with this setup.
While he has decided to put buy the components separately and build the system himself, there are complete systems on the market as well. (Note to readers: I am not getting any cut from these dealers if you buy from them).
One interesting point about this kind of thing is that no one really knows how much of “island capacity” is installed in Germany. The installation figures reported are only about systems that participate in the feed-in tariff. All capacity that is installed with only own consumption in mind is not part of the reporting, and I was unable to find any numbers about this part of the market.
