In countries like Germany, balcony-mounted solar panels are all the rage. But from breaker-masking to voltage mismatches, America’s grid isn’t ready for it—yet.
On some level, water would work the same way. If you were to collect water from somewhere, feed it into a pump and hook that up to your kitchen faucet, as soon as you increased pressure a little above that of the public water pipe, water would flow backwards from your faucet through the pipes in the house into the public water supply and your water meter might run backwards, depending on its construction.
disclaimer: Unlike freshly harvested AC electricity from a solar inverter, home collected water does not meet the hygiene standards for public supply. Absolutely do not do that either.
And this is why the UK has separated hot and cold water taps.
Your hot water used to come from a rainwater tank on the roof, and it was illegal to pipe it to a mixing faucet because if something went wrong with the cold water site it could pull undrinkable hot water from these tanks and faucets and contaminate all the drinking water.
Works for these plug-in solar panels too - illegal here in Finland, because if the grid went down, these types of panels could keep feeding the house, out to the street, and electrocute a line worker.
(Also because installing solar panels is a well protected job over here, can’t touch that occupation and their revenue stream)
because if the grid went down, these types of panels could keep feeding the house, out to the street, and electrocute a line worker
The inverter in these is designed to shut down if it doesn’t detect a waveform from the grid to sync with - they are unable to create a 50 Hz AC wave on their own. As long as the hardware is legit (which is a big if with how easy it is to get unsafe junk in from China) there is no safety issue, it’s purely regulatory.
On some level, water would work the same way. If you were to collect water from somewhere, feed it into a pump and hook that up to your kitchen faucet, as soon as you increased pressure a little above that of the public water pipe, water would flow backwards from your faucet through the pipes in the house into the public water supply and your water meter might run backwards, depending on its construction.
disclaimer: Unlike freshly harvested AC electricity from a solar inverter, home collected water does not meet the hygiene standards for public supply. Absolutely do not do that either.
And this is why the UK has separated hot and cold water taps.
Your hot water used to come from a rainwater tank on the roof, and it was illegal to pipe it to a mixing faucet because if something went wrong with the cold water site it could pull undrinkable hot water from these tanks and faucets and contaminate all the drinking water.
Works for these plug-in solar panels too - illegal here in Finland, because if the grid went down, these types of panels could keep feeding the house, out to the street, and electrocute a line worker.
(Also because installing solar panels is a well protected job over here, can’t touch that occupation and their revenue stream)
The inverter in these is designed to shut down if it doesn’t detect a waveform from the grid to sync with - they are unable to create a 50 Hz AC wave on their own. As long as the hardware is legit (which is a big if with how easy it is to get unsafe junk in from China) there is no safety issue, it’s purely regulatory.
Lots to learn here today! Thanks everyone!
Lähdetään uimaan!