A company in #Wales which installed #solar power, #heatpumps and #insulation has gone into administration with all 300 #jobs lost..

https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2026-01-11/hundreds-of-jobs-lost-as-energy-firm-enters-administration

The Clean Energy States Alliance has published a report on “What States Need to Know about #PlugInSolar”.

The report is summary about #balconysolar from an #American perspective.

Although we think the German prices are calculated a little bit to high, because we think you can have installation cost as low as 0,28 EUR/Wp, its a good overview.

It also contains a cost return calculator for #solar on the balcony for #US Consumers.

Amongst other the report also mentions #CPAP machines as good examples for #emergencypower use, higlighting the systems ability to provide #electrictiy even during #grid failure, if you have battery!

https://balkon.solar/news/2026/01/10/us-plug-in-solar-cost-recovery-calculator/

Another test to see how stupid #Starmer and the current #Labour administration think the electorate are .

If he thinks he can water down proposed requirements to include batteries with new build homes and no one will notice he’s the short term thinking fool.

Most social housing tenants question why they are currently offered #solar panels but no battery storage.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/02/ministers-may-cut-green-tech-mandate-from-new-homes-regulations-in-england

RE: https://freiburg.social/@balkonsolar/115754433974727816

At Germany’s equivalent of Home Depot you can get a 445 W solar panel for €69, an inverter for 109€ and mounting for 49€, cables for 29€. And this isn’t the cheapest offer.

#pluginpv #homedepot #solar #diy

I really will have to get a generator next year, no amount of panels will offset weeks of shit weather.

There are butane generators and the infrastructure here is really good for that (government price guarantees, local distribution sites)

From what I can tell from the docs of my inverter, if I run a generator and pass it into the AC in, it'll use part of the input and run it into the battery.

It's a low frequency inverter so the big-ass copper coil transformer should run both ways

#Solar

Things I'd do differently with my #solar / #battery / #heatpump if I'd known - #1....

I'd buy more battery. Not so much of an issue in summer due to the solar, but in winter we could easily time-shift double our current capacity (i.e. charging at cheap rate, discharging during peak rate).

As it is our 10kWh is usually done by lunchtime or early afternoon, especially when the heatpump is doing it's thing and it's a dull day.

Will know for next tine 🤷🏻

#Ecoflow #recall more batteries. Like the previous recalls it's relatively old tech. Unlike the last recalls it's getting a firmware update not a physical recall

Not clear if non US units are affected but these are older explody NCM battery cells not modern much safer LFP ones used in the Delta 2 or later I believe so this is not something you want to ignore.

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2026/EcoFlow-Technology-Recalls-Delta-Max-2000-Power-Stations-Due-to-Risk-of-Serious-Burn-Injury-and-Fire-Hazard

#solar #battery

I just read a news that the #solar boom in Pakistan coincided with the rapid depletion of water tables, perhaps a sign that capitalism will derail the #solarpunk revolution. I'm making a film that envisions a future where profit doesn't drive change, and clean energy happens with social justice. I need your support to make it 🙏 Share or donate if you can!

1430/2000

Details https://www.dilmandila.com/embracing-solarpunk-in-my-stories/

#crowdfunding #mutualaid #crowdfund #creativetoots #sff #scifi #science #buyIntoArt #art

Cheap #solar panels are changing the world.

But there is a dark side to this technological progress. The consequences of relying too much on solar power could be devastating.

Read on:

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/11/chapter-16-here-comes-the-sun-god/

#SciFi #ShortStory

Remember the massive blackout in Spain last year? When some people had no electricity for about 24h?

Back then, the blame was immediately put on renewables, pushing the claim that wind and solar are unreliable.

Well, the answers are in, and that was a big, fat lie by media beholden to the fossil fuel industry:

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5534949/spain-blackout-misinformation-renewable-energy

Unfortunately, too many people believe this crap. The opposite is true: renewables paired with batteries stabilize the net.

#renewable
#solar
#blackout

It's widely reported that #China has been building out huge amounts of #solar photovoltaic generation, and of course that is a big contributor to slowing #ClimateChange. But what I discovered to my surprise this week is that China is also #Reforesting faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, which is an equally important contributor, and also contributes positively to the #Oxygen cycle.

https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation

@yogthos

I remember many people (mostly white folks) telling me that I'm crazy & have no idea what I was talking about - when I told them that while Global North kept ignoring opportunities for shifting to more #SolarPower & more #WindEnergy to move away from #FossilFuels as part of longterm #EnergyProducing plans/infrastructure, China was going to kick global ass with their full investments on wind & solar #AlternativeEnergy. I said that in 1996.

China became the world's leading installer of #photovoltaics in 2013. China surpassed Germany as the world's largest producer of photovoltaic energy in 2015 & became the first country to have over 100 GW of total installed photovoltaic capacity in 2017. As of 2024, Chinese firms are the industry leaders in almost all of the key parts of the solar industry supply chain, including polysilicon, silicon wafers, batteries & photovoltaic modules.

#WindPower remained China's 3rd largest source of #electricity at the end of 2021, accounting for 7.5% of total power generation.
China is forecast to have 1200 GW of combined #wind & #solar capacity by 2030 as part of the government's pledge to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary #energy consumption to around 25% by that year.

Both wind & solar energy industries in China have created thousands of sustainable jobs as well. They have boosted the Chinese economy from within.

#AsianMastodon #DivestFromFossilFuels #GlobalSouth #ChineseEnergyIndustry

#RenewableEnergy overtook #coal as world's leading source of #electricity in first half of #2025 - a historic first.
Electricity demand is growing around world but growth in #solar and #wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use.
Developing countries, especially #China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the #US and #EU relied more than before on planet-warming #fossilfuels.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rz08en2po

Anyone else around #Wirral #Liverpool going to see the Power Station film on Tuesday? https://power.film/ "Two artists in Walthamstow set out to take their street off the grid, kickstarting a #solar -powered energy revolution." #NewBrighton screening is 6pm https://newbrighton.thelight.co.uk/power-station #SolarPunk

Only some minor leveling and I'll be ready to start filling my #solar ground mounts with gravel.

I started clearing this area to extend my solar field in the spring, it's been a long process.

Alt...

three rows of black Powerfield Powerracks arranged in a forest clearing

Alt...

view from front, up a hill there is a trench visible going up to the first row of Powerracks

Dear #Solar nerds of the fediverse. Does anyone have any ideas for effective ways to attach solar panels to balcony railings, in such a way that they can withstand 120kph winds? I can't risk a panel falling off and killing someone.

#SolarPunk

Having to get used to the cloudier days and balancing the charge/discharge of Octopus Flux schedules for the first time since installation in May.
It really doesn’t help when the sun literally gives the #solar forecast the finger though, but has saved me a bit from not charging enough in the early hours.

Alt...

Energy use and actual vs forecast solar, the actual spikes over double the forecast in the middle of the day.

TL;DR if battery technology and price continues its current trajectory, households will be able to store all the electricity they need at a price that is similar to the solar panels on the roof in just a few years from now. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/how-big-a-solar-battery-do-i-need-to-store-all-my-homes-electricity/ by @Edent

#Renewables #Solar #Battery #EnergySovereignty #DecentraliseTheGrid

How big a solar battery do I need to store *all* my home's electricity?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/how-big-a-solar-battery-do-i-need-to-store-all-my-homes-electricity/

I have a modest set of solar panels on an entirely ordinary house in suburban London.

On average they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each year. Obviously, we can't use all the power produced over summer and we need to buy power in winter. So here's my question:

How big a battery would we need in order to be completely self-sufficient?

Background

Let's take a look at a typical summer's day. The graph is a little complex, so I'll explain it.

The yellow line shows solar production. It starts shortly after sunrise, peaks at midday, and gradually drops until sunset.

The red line shows how much electricity our home is using. As you can see, there's a large peak about 19:00 when we cook dinner.

The blue line shows how much electricity we draw or export from the grid. From midnight until sunrise we import because the sun isn't shining. Once the sun has risen we're able to power our house and export to our neighbours. When we cook, we draw from the grid and our battery - which is why the evening grid peak is lower than the household use dip.

The CSV of the data looks something like this:

Local_time

Household_(W)

Solar_(W)

2025-08-25T08:25:00.000+01:00

-187.76

1166.77

2025-08-25T08:30:00.000+01:00

-227.04

1193.25

2025-08-25T08:35:00.000+01:00

-253.06

1222.84

2025-08-25T08:40:00.000+01:00

-266.87

1245.18

2025-08-25T08:45:00.000+01:00

-450.8

1268.66

2025-08-25T08:50:00.000+01:00

-251.84

1281.79

2025-08-25T08:55:00.000+01:00

-1426.26

1306.93

2025-08-25T09:00:00.000+01:00

-206.78

1341.37

2025-08-25T09:05:00.000+01:00

-215.52

1390.9

2025-08-25T09:10:00.000+01:00

-242.6

1426.19

2025-08-25T09:15:00.000+01:00

-246.84

1473

It's fairly trivial to sum both columns and subtract one from the other. That shows either the excess or deficit in solar power for the household.

On that day, the house used 9.7kWh and generated 19.6kWh. I'd need a 9.9kWh battery to store the excess right? Wrong!

Because my usage doesn't track the sun, I'd actually need a 13kWh battery. That's the peak amount of excess electricity I've generated in that one day.

What I want to do is find out what the maximum size battery I would need in order to store all of summer's electricity for use in winter.

Luckily, I have several years of real data to go off! Let's get started!

Disclaimer

This is based on data generated by my home battery. It has probes to measure solar output and grid flow. It is not 100% clock-accurate compared to my solar-panels' internal reporting nor what my smart-meter reports. I estimate a 1-2% deviation, which is good enough for these purposes.

My energy usage isn't representative of anything other than my usage. Your household is probably different. I already have a 4.8kWh battery which changes how and when I use energy.

This doesn't account for gas heating or hot water. We have some electric heaters and taps which increases our electricity usage.

My maths is probably right - but the code is open source, so feel free to check for yourself.

Remember, this is just a bit of fun. There's no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025.

Code

We tend to start generating more electricity than we use starting in Spring. So I've picked the end of March 2024 to the end of March 2025.

Let's see how big a battery we'd need to store our summer excess for winter. This finds the cumulative difference between each day's energy production and usage:

import osimport pandas as pd# Load all the CSVsfilepaths = [f for f in os.listdir(".") if f.endswith('.csv')]df = pd.concat(map(pd.read_csv, filepaths))# Make sure they're in orderdf = df.sort_values("Timestamp")df = df.reset_index(drop=True)# Resolution is every 5 minutes, so divide by 12 to get hourlydf["Cumulative_Difference"] = ( (df["Household_(W)"] + df["Solar_(W)"] ).cumsum() ) / 12# kWh of battery neededint(df["Cumulative_Difference"].max() / 1000)## Draw a pretty graphdf.plot(kind="line", x="Local_time", y="Cumulative_Difference", xlabel="Date", ylabel="MWh", xticks=["2024-04-01", "2024-05-01", "2024-05-01", "2024-06-01", "2024-07-01", "2024-08-01", "2024-09-01", "2024-10-01", "2024-11-01", "2024-12-01", "2025-01-01", "2025-02-01", "2025-03-01", "2025-04-01"], legend=False, grid=True, fontsize=15)plt.show()

The total is 1,068KWh - basically, a MegaWatt-hour of storage.

Here's a quick graph to show how the storage would be used over the year.

As you can see, even in this scenario there are a few days where we'd need to import energy from the grid.

Is this sensible?

Probably not, no. It doesn't account for increased energy use from having an electric car or moving away from gas heating / cooking. As solar panels increase in efficiency, it might be more sensible to replace the panels on my roof, or add some onto a shed.

The environmental impact of creating and storing such huge batteries could also be factored in.

A battery which is only 100% full for a few days probably isn't an efficient design. Using wind, hydro, and other green sources from the grid might be preferable.

But, remember, this is an exercise in wishful thinking.

Is this possible?

Grid-scale batteries exist and they work brilliantly.

But if I wanted my own MegaWatt-hour of battery storage, it would probably cost me between £100k and half-a-million quid.

That doesn't include maintenance, the land, planning permission, and a hundred other things.

But battery prices are falling fast. In the last decade lithium ion battery prices have fallen 90%. With new sodium ion batteries promising an even bigger drop - down to US$10/kWh.

If - and it is a big if - those numbers came to pass, it would probably cost around £8,000 for a domestic battery. Basically the same cost as adding solar panels in the first place.

Domestic solar works - yes, even in the rainy UK! It is relatively cheap, moves energy production as close as possible to energy consumption, reduces bill-shock, and means we don't have endless planning arguments about whether fields should be turned into solar farms.

It is possible that, not too long in the future, every home could also have a 1 MegaWatt-hour battery. They would be able to capture all the excess solar power generated in a year.

There's a bright and sunny future where every home can be solar-self-sufficient.

If you've enjoyed this blog post, please consider switching to Octopus Energy - we both get £50 when you join.

#solar

🆕 blog! “How big a solar battery do I need to store *all* my home's electricity?”

I have a modest set of solar panels on an entirely ordinary house in suburban London.

On average they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each year. Obviously, we can't use all the power produced over summer and we need to buy power in…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/how-big-a-solar-battery-do-i-need-to-store-all-my-homes-electricity/
⸻
#solar

🌞
Between the #solar panels and the battery, I've enough electricity to run the #airfryer for my lunch.

Is this #SolarPunk?

Alt...

Solar providing 1.27kW and battery providing 0.41kW. No electricity being drawn from the grid.

Your regular reminder not to use cheap #solar cables and connectors from random online stores.

Just helped someone diagnose a solar problem as "the cheap cable I bought melted in the MC4 connector and it's a good job it wasn't near anything flammable"

Most of those cables are not double insulated, badly crimped and rated at < 36v and often CCA not copper so not even high current carrying. They might look fine to the unfamiliar and you might think "it's only 800W" but that's enough for a fire..

🔋 Yesterday, a #Solar battery saved @edent@mastodon.social £1.38 by using 3.95kWh of stored electricity.

Total battery savings since August 2023:
💷 £864.07
⚡ 2,573 kWh

FAQ: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-faq/

What would it take for our home to be Solar Self-Sufficient?

Work in progress, but I think I have the answer.

🏠 I live in an ordinary house in suburban London.
☀️ Our solar panels generate 3,800kWh per year.
🔌 We use the same amount of electricity per year.

After crunching the numbers:

🔋 Capturing all our solar excess needs a 1 MegaWatt-hour battery.

#Solar #SolarPunk

Alt...

Graph of cumulative difference between solar production and electricity use. Starting at zero in March and gradually growing over 6 months, then descending to zero again.

#solar #solarpower #solarenergy

Ikea has started selling plug-in solar kits. No permits, no installers, full placement flexibility.

Currently they are only available in Germany but if it goes well they will start rolling them out in many more countries.

The system is small (800W) but that's enough to cover roughly 35% of a typical European apartment's daily electricity use.

> For one half-hour period on July 8, solar output was a record 14 gigawatts, meeting almost 40 per cent of Britain’s electricity demand during that period, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso).

https://on.ft.com/4lyFl2K

#Solar

50% #recycled glass #solarpanel performs like brand new
#Solar panel recycler #SOLARCYCLE and Arizona State University proved solar panels made with recycled glass work just as well as new.
With Arizona State’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, solar recycling company created prototype solar panel – called a “mini module”– using 50% recycled glass pulled from end-of-life solar panels. The mini module matched the performance of panels made entirely with new materials.
https://electrek.co/2025/08/01/50-percent-recycled-glass-solar-panel-performs-like-brand-new/

Canada is burning.

30 million hectares have burned in the last thirty months.

The Amazon, the world's 'other' lungs burned at a rate of 2 million hectares a year.

30 million hectares have burned in 🇨🇦 in the last thirty months.

Canada has NO Major Solar Project.
Canada has NO Major Wind Project.

Canada is the LARGEST PRODUCER OF CO2 On Earth.

#cdnpoli #Canada #shame #canpoli #carney #lpc #ndp #suzuki #build #solar #wind #tide

Alt...

A Canadian Capital city choking on cancerous smoke. Canada is the largest producer of CO2 on earth. Canada is Burning a Million HECTARES every month. Canada is burning 2,700,000 acres of first growth old trees EVERY MONTH

Alt...

Prime Minister Carney needs your loud demand to fight climate and fight fires and build solar and offshore wind, or our children die.