this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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This particular type of home solar implementation runs into a scalability issue where each piece is hard-limited by the ampacity of the outlet its plugged into, so at a certain point it can only scale out to be plugged into more outlets and take up more space.
Also, having a system thay feeds into an outlet is quite scary, since the male side of the plug is energized. I get the convenience of this "plug and play" sort of device, but I'd much prefer to see something hardwired and enclosed.
Huh, I wonder what the safety features are. From a skim of the article, it's detects power demand somehow, so maybe that helps.
Also, I'm concerned for linesmen, because somebody is going to buy this and not tell their company that they are energising the local grid, rather than just consuming. Europe apparently has some kind of solution, but nothing stops you from using it elsewhere.
From the article, it says it automatically shuts down if it detects a full power outage for exactly that reason
Yeah, legally that's what it needs to do at that point in the system. if you want a solar system to be energized during an outage, you have to have what's called a "Grid-forming" inverter (as opposed to grid-following) and it would likely need to connect up at the utility connection point
Grid forming inverters are for solar generating plants. They are allowed to start up an unenergized grid. At that level they are a part of the utility grid.
For homes to run of of solar when the grid is down you need to do islanding. This is a seperate beaker box feed directly by the solar and battery. This allows the house or a portion of it to stayed powered without putting power back to the grid and endangering any linemen working on the grid.