The hero image in this article shows the realities of a lot of balcony solar setups: The panel is held up with zip ties stretched over a large span, which will snap after UV exposure in the sun. That panel is going to fall over in a few months. The remaining equipment and wiring is sitting on the ground, one errant kick away from dangling off the edge. That power cable is probably running through a door or window where it gets squished and damaged each time it’s opened and closed. The panel is mounted vertically and behind a thick glass panel, meaning it will be getting much less sunlight than the sticker rating, which she probably used to estimate her savings.
Balcony solar setups don’t have to look like this, but many do. You can find much better examples from users who do a good job thinking it all through. Often they’re an impulse purchase by someone like the person in the article who want a hobby or the bragging rights of saying they have solar, but for whom the important details like safely mounting everything and running the wires in a way that will survive 10 years are an afterthought.
That’s why I’m starting to change my mind on this balcony solar concept for the masses. I think it would be great if there was a low friction way for qualified individuals to install a reasonable system, but I’m afraid the actual reality will be a bunch of zip-tied solar panels dangling from balconies like this.
But let's be fair here, as you do a lot of assumptions:
The zip ties are metal zip ties. Those won't fall off because of UV.
Panel is hanging inside the balcony. If it falls, it will fall into the balcony - it's bigger then the rails and ground is solid. It's not running behind the glass, the glass looks taken off. I can't be 100% sure, but it seems so. You can't see how the power cable is pushed into the home, so that's pure speculation.
The picture looks like taken mid-installation, some metal ties aren't even fastened.
I would say you are right that the zips are stainless steel. My guess is they could still snap easily with a lot of wind but actually I don't know how much load they can take.
There's probably an outdoor outlet on the deck/balcony it's plugged into. Would be pretty typical to have on a balcony like hers.
The balcony appears to have full coverage on the railing - there isn't a gap at the bottom for anything to fall out through. The metal frame makes it looks like there is at first glance, but look at the seam on the glass - it continues further down than that bottom crossbar.
This might fall over into the balcony some day and break but it shouldn't really be a hazard to anyone else.
Beyond this, the reality is that plenty of the other balconies likely have string lights or other electronic items plugged in 24/7 and with their connectors sitting on the ground on the balcony. Same with having a bunch of unsecured/poorly items that could theoretically get tossed off it by an extreme storm. Not ideal, but I don't see why we should be acting like this is much different from everything else in that sense.
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Now speaking more generally:
- Cities should have reasonable regulations (and likely, already do) about securing anything being positioned where it could fall off and hit someone, particularly over a sidewalk or public space. (As mentioned, I don't think this one is a major hazard upon taking a second glance).
- Balcony solar kits should probably at least ship with some safety cabling and have integrated mount points for those cables that are sturdy enough to withstand wind + drop shocks.
- My concerns in the US/North America are more around how we handle the much lower ratings of our typical residential circuits, it's easier for a consumer to overload a circuit here with something like this than in Europe.
- If we're not requiring a dedicated circuit/single-outlet circuit for it seems difficult to maintain safety unless we're capping the maximum power per system quite low. And if we are requiring a dedicated circuit for it/an electrician to approve it we're greatly limiting who will ever be able to install these.
Overall though, I'm still positive on the concept and don't want to see it buried in regulatory hell, especially with how well adoption has apparently gone elsewhere.
> The balcony appears to have full coverage on the railing - there isn't a gap at the bottom for anything to fall out through. The metal frame makes it looks like there is at first glance, but look at the seam on the glass - it continues further down than that bottom crossbar.
There is a gap at the bottom. You must be looking at something else because the glass panel clearly terminates into the horizontal metal bar.
A gap is typically left for water drainage and so debris like leaves don’t get trapped.
The panel isn’t going to fall off the balcony, but it could get damaged or become such a nuisance that it’s removed long before it has any chance of payoff. This is actually an easy way to acquire cheap balcony solar gear: Many kits are bought by people who didn’t think about the realities of having it out there all the time and sell it later.
We have a similar approach here in Germany. Anyone has the right to install a small solar system on their balcony or similar and feed up to 800W into their local grid. You just mount it and plug it into your house/apartment grid. Technically you have to get it registered, too.
The sky is not falling, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is not burning.
It's not revolutionary either, but slowly picking up traction. You see more and more installations here in Berlin. On the country side where people have their own house and enough space it's a total no-brainer to set up one of those mini solar systems.
The typical systems you can buy off the shelf (800-1000W panels + inverter) amortize after a few years already, and are getting cheaper every year. I have the feeling the main limitation in the city is having a nice balcony with good mounting points.
The sky is not falling in Germany, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is sometimes overpowered with solar electricity when the weather is sunny, there is not enough demand and grid operators can't remotely curtail small solar systems. Like during Easter Monday
Germany has to invest more in smart electric meters, which could project negative electricity prices to individual households.
And more investments in energy storage systems. (Even through I think that lithium batteries would better help decarbonization in EVs than in electric grid storage systems).
Totally agree, the current state of the German grid is not ideal. But I have the naive gut feeling that storage prices will also come down and we will see a similar non-political quiet revolution here as well. I.e. people and companies will simply install more and more storage because it is economically viable, not because of ideology. We'll see.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency is aware of stability issues of the German electric grid on days like Easter Monday and insufficient deployment of smart meters.
It's worth noting that the common complaint about systems like this, which is that they could cause dangerous conditions during power outages when people expect the power lines to be unpowered, is addressed by electronics that only feed power when they detect an active mains.
All solar inventors connected to public electric grid have to detect this state and disconnect. You are not allowed to connect arbitrary inventors to electric grid, they have to be compliant with IEEE 1547, UL 1741.
Right now, they're about 300 EUR at OBI (major home improvement chain in Germany and Austria) if you don't care at all about avoiding ties to specific apps, and about 1000 from solar specialists if you want to go with the more flexible Hoymiles + OpenDTU inverter setup, 4 panels and a 2kWh (or so) battery, and is one of the few things that has gotten cheaper recently.
Since it's not a battery storage setup, the energy being sent into your home circuit alleviates demand by a small amount. Where did they come up with 10 to 25% savings? Factors such as an optimal view of the sun for as much as possible, south-facing or biased East or West, would be the max. payoff. Night would be a zero net gain. At a savings of $7 a month, the panel would pay for itself in maybe 10 years not factoring in government subsidies. You need to keep it clean as well for it to maintain its potential output.
Stuff like your fridge can use a fair chunk of power continuously and a small solar setup can offset that when the sun is out. Same with routers, chargers, standby devices, TVs, etc.
For a 800W setup, 4–5 kWh on a very good summer day is plausible. Over a full year, it's going to be something like 600–900 kWh depending on orientation, shading, and location. So in strong summer months you might get something like 80–120 kWh. But you won't be able to use all of that unless you have a battery.
However, A typical apartment in Germany is not using that much electricity. Roughly speaking, a one-person place might use around 160 kWh a month and a two-person place around 270 kWh. Finding a use for 20–30 kWh a month during sunny periods. That's how you get to 10%. 25% might be harder but doable if you could somehow have a battery soak up the excess power. I don't think there are a lot of plug and play solutions for that yet. But it should not be that hard to do technically.
Power in Germany is relatively expensive 160*0.40 is about 80/month for me. I pay a bit less than that because I use less power somehow. But still, that's is close to 1000 euro per year. Saving 100 per year means the whole setup would earn itself back in 2-4 years (most plug and play setups you find on amazon are between 200 and 400 euro). And depending on where you live you can actually get some of that back via subsidy. But it basically pays for itself even if you don't. Unless like me your balcony faces east and you only get a few hours of sunlight in the morning.
I did really rough math and a hypothetical 200W panel getting 100% sun for 5 hours per day (1 kW/hr) would net you a whopping ~$9.30 in savings per month. We're paying something like $0.31 per kW/hr in NYC and it's a lot of money right now.
Did your calculations account for the suboptimal angle of the panels in most balcony solar setups? Most calculators assume the panels are at an optimal angle or on a roof pitch, not vertical like the image in the article.
A setup like the image in the article is going to get much lower than optimal efficiency because the panel is mounted vertically. She could be netting closer to $2-3 dollars per month or even less depending on which way she’s facing.
The technology is well understood. It is really a regulation problem, which is why it is coming state-by-state. States are just now even looking at the idea. For a complete list of which states allow it, check out this link https://plugsolarhub.com/states-and-regulations
There are some safety concerns at least for relatively powerful panels - e. g. if a circuit breaker is 30A you can draw up to 30A from the grid in absence of panels. If you connect a panel which can provide another 30A then a device in theory will be able to draw 60A from the socket not triggering circuit breaker which will overload the socket circuit.
Since the panels don't plug in directly but have to go through an inverter that turns the panel's DC into the grid's AC, you can "solve" this by limiting the maximum output current of the inverter to some safe level (e.g. allowing 8A of solar on a 20A circuit, eating into safety margins). You can still connect powerful panels, but all that will get you is more output in mornings, evenings and under cloud cover, not more max output.
Or you can pair it with a reasonably sized battery to store midday "surplus" (any generation beyond the determined safe level) and release it into the circuit when the panel generates less
It is also why every space heater in the United States uses exactly 1.5KW. It is like maximum strength medication. You can't legally buy more, and no one wants less.
The comment by a_paddy is dead and I can't respond to it directly, but all electrical generation and inverters have disconnect switches that monitor for that exact scenario and disconnect in less than 1 cycle (1/60 second). This has been a solved problem for a very long time, yet seems to come up in every forum that discusses home solar.
There is always also someone piling "And also, you have to clean them!" as an argument against solar panels, somehow thinking that 30 seconds with a anti-duster wand is some big drawback.
I never understood the economics of these. Say a balcony panel would generate $X worth of electricity for me over the next 5 years. Surely someone who can place the panel on a roof or something, where it is not shaded by a giant building half the day, can generate like $3X from it. It can be part of a bigger installation too, so labor is better amortized. Given that the supply of people with roofs is far from exhausted why would the price of panels be at a level where $X instead of $3X is a reasonable return? Basically you are bidding for panels against an unlimited supply of people for whom the panels are much more valuable than to you, no?
This is primarily for renters of apartments who aren't allowed to alter the roofs. In the US, labor is more than half the cost of a rooftop installation which is hampering their adoption. The balcony solar has no labor cost at all and if the tenant needs to move, they can take it with them to their next rental so they won't lose their investment.
A window unit in each room can do it. They are unsightly and noisy, but they are cheap, easy to install, work, and the tenant can take them to the next apartment.
I live in the Phoenix metro area, on the second floor. My balcony faces precisely 225° in azimuth. That is due southwest.
A few years ago, I purchased a "solar backpack" which incorporates a solar panel and a laptop-sized power bank. During the winter solstice, I tried charging the power bank with actual solar energy, and it took more than 3 weeks to fill it up!
Our lease agreement has some concessions for potential satellite dishes and external TV antennas. So I asked my landlady if she would permit me to install solar panels out there. Her answer was a resounding "NO".
It wasn't merely about the aesthetics, but also about the question of hooking them up. Our electricity is unmetered and included in our rent. My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system? It would be chaos, and the management would have no way of regulating or maintaining such a bizarre setup. I think that's going to be a major logistics challenge for anyone who goes down this road.
> Our electricity is unmetered and included in our rent. My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system
I don't understand. These systems just plug into wall outlets. The big difference is that, instead of saving yourself money, you'd be saving your landlady money on the bill.
Agreed. It's just a sub panel off the main. Could be 10 sub panels deep and it wouldn't play havoc with anything. The inverter syncs with the line frequency then boosts its voltage just enough to see it push current into the grid which is a few hundred mV. I would even hazard a guess that the impedance between the panels is enough to say that the current is likely being pulled directly by the closest loads: the tenant's loads.
I'm thinking that the landlady's "NO!" is based on: (1) You can't save yourself any money by doing this, so why are you interested?, and (2) Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.
Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry to muddy the waters, but the solar backpack was an experiment unrelated to my request to place actual solar panels on the balcony.
I would say that it is not out of ignorance that my landlady denied my request. Rather, when you're dealing with tenants who live in an apartment along with hundreds of other tenants living in identical apartment units, you become quite averse to any unique snowflake situations like this.
The maintenance crew is really good at maintaining a fleet of refrigerators, toilets, and ranges that are the same model and hook up in the same way. They offer a standard set of appliances and fixtures that are provided in each unit, and they are serviced uniformly! Imagine if you had a fleet of 500 Supermicro 1U servers, and one of your colocation clients wanted to hook up a custom Ethernet switch made in Outer Mongolia. You'd probably say "no" too.
Regardless of how these panels hook up to the "grid" inside here, it would be nonstandard. The cord itself would snake through the door, onto the floor, somehow, without a dedicated conduit, and it'd be subject to damage, and the door would never close properly. The panels themselves would cover and conceal some part of the railing, and that is considered unsightly and unwanted; they don't want tenants up there with concealed balconies, much less clothes or junk hanging off of them.
The uniformity and conformity of each unit is key. It's like living in an HOA. When we sign the lease, we agree to keep our exteriors neat, tidy, and uniform. There are no flags or signs or stickers that we can put outside. It reduces controversy as well as easing the burden of maintenance and cleaning.
Many years ago, I was renting a very modern 2BR unit and I decided that one of the rooms really needed a ceiling fan (it was a hot summer in a chilly climate!) so I went to Home Depot, purchased a kit, and installed the ceiling fan where a dome light had been. I didn't... ask anyone... and I have no electrician's expertise, nor did I check whether the structure could support it. It must've been quite a surprise when they found it after I moved out!
> Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.
What wiring? Literally connect the setup to the regular power outlet, no fuzzing with wires or otherwise, probably any human who've connected some electrical gadget/device to a socket before could get these solar setups going in a couple of minutes.
Can't there can be over-current issues if you are not using a dedicated wall outlet for backfeeding the solar?
Consider a situation where the plugged-in solar inverter is capable of providing 15 amps into the circuit, but so is the breaker feeding the circuit from the panel. If you plug in something that can consume 30 amps, it will be able to do so by pulling 15 amps from each source without tripping the breaker, so you can end up with 30 amps traveling in your building wiring that is only sized for 15.
At least that's how I understand it. I don't know if any of the grid-tied inverters that can plug into a wall have some way of detecting and compensating for this. Clearly other countries have been able to come to a decision to allow it. I vaguely remember someone explaining that the 230V systems in Europe somehow mitigate the issue but I don't remember how.
Yeah, so I guess when both the renter and the landlord doesn't understand the solution (or renter does understand, but didn't explain properly), it'll be a hard sell indeed.
If you've got normal residential power outlets, then you've got wiring inside the walls. Those wires are sized for the number of amps that the individual circuit's fuse or breaker allows, plus some limited safety margin.
Depending on hidden-in-the-wall details of how a circuit's wiring is run, and where you plug in panels and electrical loads, it might be quite easy to overload those wires - without blowing the fuse or tripping the breaker.
Overloaded wires can get very hot, and electrical fires starting inside walls really is a thing.
> My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system? It would be chaos, and the management would have no way of regulating or maintaining such a bizarre setup.
The balcony solar setups are sized to be small enough that they can be fed into standard systems.
There’s no “chaos”. It just offsets consumption a little bit. New electric meters have been able to account for or at least not get confused by reverse flow should it occur at the small levels that balcony solar setups might produce.
A solar backpack is a backpack with a relatively tiny solar panel. It's not designed to power an apartment. It's barely designed to power a laptop. You wouldn't be plugging one of these into the mains.
Solar systems are well understood, as is the business of connecting them to existing power. Magic boxes exist to handle exactly this problem. Connecting them up isn't hard, but installations usually require professional certification to stop people frying themselves and/or their wiring.
DIY solar makes no sense if you're paying your building for unmetered power.
Generally apartment solar can be a nice optional accessory, but very few apartments have the space for a system capable of powering the entire apartment for a significant part of the year.
Yes. Which is why laws require brackets, etc. But landlords have to allow window air conditioners (installed properly, etc) because old people can die in the heat. They're less likely to want to accept liability for something not required by law. Air Conditioners also injure firefighters because they tend to fall during fires:
> management would have no way of regulating or maintaining such a bizarre setup
What kind of regulation is needed? What about this is bizarre? If you’re concerned that these systems might be a fire hazard, that’s already a problem (space heaters, heating blankets, hot plates, etc). If you’re concerned that these systems won’t play nicely on a shared AC line, that’s already a problem (e.g., motors). I don’t see anything “bizarre” here.
They provide a supply that bypasses the circuit's fuse. A malfunctioning device (not a dead short) might draw more current than its plug is rated for. E.g. a NEMA 5-15 plug is rated for 15A, it needs to be installed with 14AWG (minimum) wire, rated for 15A at +30°C temperature rise over ambient, and a 15A breaker. Loads on the circuit must not draw more than 80% of the circuit's rated current continuously, 0.8 * 15A * 120V = 1,440W (12A). US devices aren't required to be fused, it's possible for one to malfunction and draw more than the 12A max, without being a "dead short". If that happens and it draws, say, 16A, and you've got a 4A solar panel on the circuit then the breaker will see 12A, the solar panel will see 4A, and the wires in the circuit will see 16A, exceeding their rating & posing a fire hazard.
These are not yet approved in Finland, one reason being that older houses might use thinner conductors to wall outlets that cannot handle higher wattages being fed from solar. Maybe fuses and circuit breakers can prevent problems, maybe not. I am not an electrician.
One fix might be a low ceiling on power output from solar units. Another fix might be to sell solar units that connect _only_ directly into a fusebox, completely bypassing in-wall wiring.
And then there is a question of island mode, so that when the power lines are down, and under repair, you don't accidentally electrocute a lineman.
I live in Berlin and it's quite common here. I personally cannot have it because my balcony has no railing but a low wall that doesn't allow me to hang the solar panel. Plus, you need a power socket easily reachable and that's also a blocker for me, otherwise I would have installed it.
I live in Virginia, and REALLY want to try this, but I am sure Dominion Virginia Power and my HOA would not be happy; rooftop solar is out of my price range. The article I provided a link to says they are trying to change the laws in the U.S. to enable everybody to do this, and I really hope they are successful.
Do these people have any idea how poor efficiency will be when you're mounting perpendicular to the ideal orientation?
This is pure vibes. It makes no sense. And it's really tacky too. Cheap panels hanging off balconies sounds horrible for the aesthetics of an area.
You would hope someone creates panels with cells arranged at an angle so that they point more towards the source. But by then the city will be full of the trashiest junk panels and people only care about the cheapest option anyway.
> Her 3.5 foot by 3.5 foot solar panel weighs about 25 pounds and is a half-inch thick. It can harvest about 220 watts of energy from the sun each day.
Grrrr. Watts is not a unit of energy.
As a holder of a physics degree this annoys me quite a lot. Journalists seem to have trouble keeping track of energy vs power. It's like saying my friends house is 5 miles per hour away.
But I think plug-in / balcony solar will be pretty cool. And I think there's a path to inexpensive, larger, safer grid-tie inverters which never backfeed, but prioritize solar input first and make up the difference with grid power.
For example, I'm imagining a box that would plug in to the wall, have a DC input from solar panels, and a power strip for loads supporting up to, ideally, a full 15A normal US 120V circuit.
Currently this box exists in the form of battery power station units (Bluetti, Ecoflow, Anker etc). But I think there could be a much less expensive form that could exist without the battery.
1lb/kg is a unit of acceleration approximately equal to 4.448m/s^2. Pound of weight, not mass, obviously. This is still more valid than almost anything in the American Journalist system of units!
>As a holder of a physics degree this annoys me quite a lot. Journalists seem to have trouble keeping track of energy vs power. It's like saying my friends house is 5 miles per hour away.
I've ranted endlessly about the outsized impact people with no expertise but a large audience have had on society. So so many people have the worldview shaped by individuals that cannot even bother to learn basics like watts and watt-hours for their "reporting".
With storage the watts are also important because it is a measure of how much power it can replace from other power plant sources which are also measured in watts. Admittedly, the time it will last is omitted, so a full energy calculation can't be done, but at least you know how many dirty peaker plants it replaces.
> Her 3.5 foot by 3.5 foot solar panel weighs about 25 pounds and is a half-inch thick. It can harvest about 220 watts of energy from the sun each day. It’s on the smaller end of available balcony solar panels. The panels can go up to almost 2,000 watts in capacity. A 1,200-watt panel is enough to power a window air conditioner unit, according to Bright Saver.
This whole paragraph is nonsense. A 2,000 watt panel is never going to go on a balcony (because it is huge for any residential balcony), and regardless of "capacity" a solar panel is not going to power a window AC unit without an intermediate storage, unless you want the compressor to shut down every time a cloud passes by.
And people complain about writing being AI generated. Is this kind of sloppy writing any better?
Why not being more considerate on how we use electricity? Low wattage lightbulbs, less laundry, shorter showers? Also since aesthetics don’t matter, let’s also hang clothes by the windows so we don’t use dryers.
It's amusing how skeptical Americas are about these renewable projects which are completely commonplace in Europe and Asia. The biggest obstacle to expanding renewable energy in America, is Americans.
This can be dangerous for utility company workers.
When a line needs to be repaired, the technician takes steps to ensure the line isn’t carrying current from known sources. A panel plugged in by a civilian via a home outlet is not known. The technician can be killed by the unexpected current.
The panels are designed to not provide current if no current is detected on the mains. Otherwise you would also have a live plug at the end of the panel. Killing your own customers is typically not a good business strategy, so quite a lot of safety has been focused on ensuring this isn't a problem.
Not just designed not to provide current, in general they simply can't. They follow the phase from the mains (the sine curve of voltage and current), without the mains there isn't a phase to follow and they simply can't output anything
This was a contributing factor in the Spain blackout, because even large-scale solar and wind plants were using the same type of simple inverters
Not really, the full report refuted this. Issue in Spain was much more nuanced. Mostly related to lax voltage controls and outdated and slow control mechanisms at the grid, high voltage net.
It can be dangerous to backfeed (which is why you're supposed to have an interlock for a generator inlet, ensuring utility power is disconnected). But:
1. These grid tie inverters are designed and tested to shut off completely if there's no grid power. (This is a big design tradeoff: it means they don't provide any power during a grid power outage, even if it's very sunny out.)
2. Even if I had a beefy generator that was unsafely backfeeding my house while the utility power was still connected, the generator would be trying to power not just my house, but all my neighbors too! And the circuit breaker and/or inverter on the generator would likely trip and shut down almost instantly.
There's still a possible risk from #2, especially if the downed wire being repaired is relatively local (i.e. your house only).
But I think #1 and #2 mitigate this risk very well.
On point 1, you can pay extra to get an inverter that does "islanding mode". During an external outage the inverter stops sending power out of the house but keeps supplying power inside the house. Whole-house backup batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall (and competitors) also have this capability.
Anyone who is looking for a generator to power their house during a regional outage should look into other types of generation that will do islanding mode.
FUD. Every inverter currently on the market immediately drops the connection if the grid isn't present, there is absolutely no way this could happen with these puny inverters.
The hero image in this article shows the realities of a lot of balcony solar setups: The panel is held up with zip ties stretched over a large span, which will snap after UV exposure in the sun. That panel is going to fall over in a few months. The remaining equipment and wiring is sitting on the ground, one errant kick away from dangling off the edge. That power cable is probably running through a door or window where it gets squished and damaged each time it’s opened and closed. The panel is mounted vertically and behind a thick glass panel, meaning it will be getting much less sunlight than the sticker rating, which she probably used to estimate her savings.
Balcony solar setups don’t have to look like this, but many do. You can find much better examples from users who do a good job thinking it all through. Often they’re an impulse purchase by someone like the person in the article who want a hobby or the bragging rights of saying they have solar, but for whom the important details like safely mounting everything and running the wires in a way that will survive 10 years are an afterthought.
That’s why I’m starting to change my mind on this balcony solar concept for the masses. I think it would be great if there was a low friction way for qualified individuals to install a reasonable system, but I’m afraid the actual reality will be a bunch of zip-tied solar panels dangling from balconies like this.
But let's be fair here, as you do a lot of assumptions:
The zip ties are metal zip ties. Those won't fall off because of UV. Panel is hanging inside the balcony. If it falls, it will fall into the balcony - it's bigger then the rails and ground is solid. It's not running behind the glass, the glass looks taken off. I can't be 100% sure, but it seems so. You can't see how the power cable is pushed into the home, so that's pure speculation.
The picture looks like taken mid-installation, some metal ties aren't even fastened.
I had to hack the web site's source code to get to this :) but here's the full pic for further forensics https://images-prod.gothamist.com/images/IMG_0113.2e16d0ba.f...
I would say you are right that the zips are stainless steel. My guess is they could still snap easily with a lot of wind but actually I don't know how much load they can take.
There's probably an outdoor outlet on the deck/balcony it's plugged into. Would be pretty typical to have on a balcony like hers.
The balcony appears to have full coverage on the railing - there isn't a gap at the bottom for anything to fall out through. The metal frame makes it looks like there is at first glance, but look at the seam on the glass - it continues further down than that bottom crossbar.
This might fall over into the balcony some day and break but it shouldn't really be a hazard to anyone else.
Beyond this, the reality is that plenty of the other balconies likely have string lights or other electronic items plugged in 24/7 and with their connectors sitting on the ground on the balcony. Same with having a bunch of unsecured/poorly items that could theoretically get tossed off it by an extreme storm. Not ideal, but I don't see why we should be acting like this is much different from everything else in that sense.
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Now speaking more generally:
- Cities should have reasonable regulations (and likely, already do) about securing anything being positioned where it could fall off and hit someone, particularly over a sidewalk or public space. (As mentioned, I don't think this one is a major hazard upon taking a second glance).
- Balcony solar kits should probably at least ship with some safety cabling and have integrated mount points for those cables that are sturdy enough to withstand wind + drop shocks.
- My concerns in the US/North America are more around how we handle the much lower ratings of our typical residential circuits, it's easier for a consumer to overload a circuit here with something like this than in Europe.
- If we're not requiring a dedicated circuit/single-outlet circuit for it seems difficult to maintain safety unless we're capping the maximum power per system quite low. And if we are requiring a dedicated circuit for it/an electrician to approve it we're greatly limiting who will ever be able to install these.
Overall though, I'm still positive on the concept and don't want to see it buried in regulatory hell, especially with how well adoption has apparently gone elsewhere.
> The balcony appears to have full coverage on the railing - there isn't a gap at the bottom for anything to fall out through. The metal frame makes it looks like there is at first glance, but look at the seam on the glass - it continues further down than that bottom crossbar.
There is a gap at the bottom. You must be looking at something else because the glass panel clearly terminates into the horizontal metal bar.
A gap is typically left for water drainage and so debris like leaves don’t get trapped.
The panel isn’t going to fall off the balcony, but it could get damaged or become such a nuisance that it’s removed long before it has any chance of payoff. This is actually an easy way to acquire cheap balcony solar gear: Many kits are bought by people who didn’t think about the realities of having it out there all the time and sell it later.
We have a similar approach here in Germany. Anyone has the right to install a small solar system on their balcony or similar and feed up to 800W into their local grid. You just mount it and plug it into your house/apartment grid. Technically you have to get it registered, too.
The sky is not falling, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is not burning.
It's not revolutionary either, but slowly picking up traction. You see more and more installations here in Berlin. On the country side where people have their own house and enough space it's a total no-brainer to set up one of those mini solar systems.
The typical systems you can buy off the shelf (800-1000W panels + inverter) amortize after a few years already, and are getting cheaper every year. I have the feeling the main limitation in the city is having a nice balcony with good mounting points.
The sky is not falling in Germany, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is sometimes overpowered with solar electricity when the weather is sunny, there is not enough demand and grid operators can't remotely curtail small solar systems. Like during Easter Monday
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-07/germany-p...
Germany has to invest more in smart electric meters, which could project negative electricity prices to individual households.
And more investments in energy storage systems. (Even through I think that lithium batteries would better help decarbonization in EVs than in electric grid storage systems).
Totally agree, the current state of the German grid is not ideal. But I have the naive gut feeling that storage prices will also come down and we will see a similar non-political quiet revolution here as well. I.e. people and companies will simply install more and more storage because it is economically viable, not because of ideology. We'll see.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency is aware of stability issues of the German electric grid on days like Easter Monday and insufficient deployment of smart meters.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-grid-regulator-l...
It's worth noting that the common complaint about systems like this, which is that they could cause dangerous conditions during power outages when people expect the power lines to be unpowered, is addressed by electronics that only feed power when they detect an active mains.
All solar inventors connected to public electric grid have to detect this state and disconnect. You are not allowed to connect arbitrary inventors to electric grid, they have to be compliant with IEEE 1547, UL 1741.
https://www.aforenergy.com/what-is-anti-islanding-in-solar-i...
https://www.iee-business.com/knowledge/wind-solar-hybrid-sys...
The households which installed solar inverters to supply electricity in case of grid blackout really have look into anti-islanding.
> IEEE 1547, UL 1741
And the EU ?
> not allowed to connect arbitrary inventors to electric grid
Ghost of Thomas Edison breathes a sigh of relief
Right now, they're about 300 EUR at OBI (major home improvement chain in Germany and Austria) if you don't care at all about avoiding ties to specific apps, and about 1000 from solar specialists if you want to go with the more flexible Hoymiles + OpenDTU inverter setup, 4 panels and a 2kWh (or so) battery, and is one of the few things that has gotten cheaper recently.
Since it's not a battery storage setup, the energy being sent into your home circuit alleviates demand by a small amount. Where did they come up with 10 to 25% savings? Factors such as an optimal view of the sun for as much as possible, south-facing or biased East or West, would be the max. payoff. Night would be a zero net gain. At a savings of $7 a month, the panel would pay for itself in maybe 10 years not factoring in government subsidies. You need to keep it clean as well for it to maintain its potential output.
Stuff like your fridge can use a fair chunk of power continuously and a small solar setup can offset that when the sun is out. Same with routers, chargers, standby devices, TVs, etc.
For a 800W setup, 4–5 kWh on a very good summer day is plausible. Over a full year, it's going to be something like 600–900 kWh depending on orientation, shading, and location. So in strong summer months you might get something like 80–120 kWh. But you won't be able to use all of that unless you have a battery.
However, A typical apartment in Germany is not using that much electricity. Roughly speaking, a one-person place might use around 160 kWh a month and a two-person place around 270 kWh. Finding a use for 20–30 kWh a month during sunny periods. That's how you get to 10%. 25% might be harder but doable if you could somehow have a battery soak up the excess power. I don't think there are a lot of plug and play solutions for that yet. But it should not be that hard to do technically.
Power in Germany is relatively expensive 160*0.40 is about 80/month for me. I pay a bit less than that because I use less power somehow. But still, that's is close to 1000 euro per year. Saving 100 per year means the whole setup would earn itself back in 2-4 years (most plug and play setups you find on amazon are between 200 and 400 euro). And depending on where you live you can actually get some of that back via subsidy. But it basically pays for itself even if you don't. Unless like me your balcony faces east and you only get a few hours of sunlight in the morning.
> Where did they come up with 10 to 25% savings?
I did really rough math and a hypothetical 200W panel getting 100% sun for 5 hours per day (1 kW/hr) would net you a whopping ~$9.30 in savings per month. We're paying something like $0.31 per kW/hr in NYC and it's a lot of money right now.
Did your calculations account for the suboptimal angle of the panels in most balcony solar setups? Most calculators assume the panels are at an optimal angle or on a roof pitch, not vertical like the image in the article.
A setup like the image in the article is going to get much lower than optimal efficiency because the panel is mounted vertically. She could be netting closer to $2-3 dollars per month or even less depending on which way she’s facing.
I said hypothetical.
It may well be in reduced AC bill as well due to increased reflectivity.
It is a thing [1] elsewhere already.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power
The technology is well understood. It is really a regulation problem, which is why it is coming state-by-state. States are just now even looking at the idea. For a complete list of which states allow it, check out this link https://plugsolarhub.com/states-and-regulations
There are some safety concerns at least for relatively powerful panels - e. g. if a circuit breaker is 30A you can draw up to 30A from the grid in absence of panels. If you connect a panel which can provide another 30A then a device in theory will be able to draw 60A from the socket not triggering circuit breaker which will overload the socket circuit.
Since the panels don't plug in directly but have to go through an inverter that turns the panel's DC into the grid's AC, you can "solve" this by limiting the maximum output current of the inverter to some safe level (e.g. allowing 8A of solar on a 20A circuit, eating into safety margins). You can still connect powerful panels, but all that will get you is more output in mornings, evenings and under cloud cover, not more max output.
Or you can pair it with a reasonably sized battery to store midday "surplus" (any generation beyond the determined safe level) and release it into the circuit when the panel generates less
Does it make sense to sell panels that plug only directly into the fusebox ? To avoid overloading in-wall wiring.
They don't generate anywhere close to 30A for exactly that reason. They are limited to 400W (4 Amps)
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=balcony+solar+maximum+watta...
Most circuits with standard plugs on them are 15A in the US. A single space heater will fully utilize one.
It is also why every space heater in the United States uses exactly 1.5KW. It is like maximum strength medication. You can't legally buy more, and no one wants less.
The comment by a_paddy is dead and I can't respond to it directly, but all electrical generation and inverters have disconnect switches that monitor for that exact scenario and disconnect in less than 1 cycle (1/60 second). This has been a solved problem for a very long time, yet seems to come up in every forum that discusses home solar.
There is always also someone piling "And also, you have to clean them!" as an argument against solar panels, somehow thinking that 30 seconds with a anti-duster wand is some big drawback.
That website just seems to hang?
It is powered by javascript for purely decorative reasons, but it won't display without it.
Try this one, it has a clickable map: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/states-passing-ba...
[dead]
I never understood the economics of these. Say a balcony panel would generate $X worth of electricity for me over the next 5 years. Surely someone who can place the panel on a roof or something, where it is not shaded by a giant building half the day, can generate like $3X from it. It can be part of a bigger installation too, so labor is better amortized. Given that the supply of people with roofs is far from exhausted why would the price of panels be at a level where $X instead of $3X is a reasonable return? Basically you are bidding for panels against an unlimited supply of people for whom the panels are much more valuable than to you, no?
This is primarily for renters of apartments who aren't allowed to alter the roofs. In the US, labor is more than half the cost of a rooftop installation which is hampering their adoption. The balcony solar has no labor cost at all and if the tenant needs to move, they can take it with them to their next rental so they won't lose their investment.
I live in Brooklyn and have spent about a grand outfitting my apartment with ACs. I would absolutely take advantage of this if the law passed.
You can outfit an entire apartment with AC for a thousand bucks?!
A window unit in each room can do it. They are unsightly and noisy, but they are cheap, easy to install, work, and the tenant can take them to the next apartment.
It's Brooklyn. It's one room.
2-3 window ACs.
I live in the Phoenix metro area, on the second floor. My balcony faces precisely 225° in azimuth. That is due southwest.
A few years ago, I purchased a "solar backpack" which incorporates a solar panel and a laptop-sized power bank. During the winter solstice, I tried charging the power bank with actual solar energy, and it took more than 3 weeks to fill it up!
Our lease agreement has some concessions for potential satellite dishes and external TV antennas. So I asked my landlady if she would permit me to install solar panels out there. Her answer was a resounding "NO".
It wasn't merely about the aesthetics, but also about the question of hooking them up. Our electricity is unmetered and included in our rent. My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system? It would be chaos, and the management would have no way of regulating or maintaining such a bizarre setup. I think that's going to be a major logistics challenge for anyone who goes down this road.
> Our electricity is unmetered and included in our rent. My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system
I don't understand. These systems just plug into wall outlets. The big difference is that, instead of saving yourself money, you'd be saving your landlady money on the bill.
Agreed. It's just a sub panel off the main. Could be 10 sub panels deep and it wouldn't play havoc with anything. The inverter syncs with the line frequency then boosts its voltage just enough to see it push current into the grid which is a few hundred mV. I would even hazard a guess that the impedance between the panels is enough to say that the current is likely being pulled directly by the closest loads: the tenant's loads.
> I don't understand...
I'm thinking that the landlady's "NO!" is based on: (1) You can't save yourself any money by doing this, so why are you interested?, and (2) Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.
> A solar backpack is a backpack
Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry to muddy the waters, but the solar backpack was an experiment unrelated to my request to place actual solar panels on the balcony.
I would say that it is not out of ignorance that my landlady denied my request. Rather, when you're dealing with tenants who live in an apartment along with hundreds of other tenants living in identical apartment units, you become quite averse to any unique snowflake situations like this.
The maintenance crew is really good at maintaining a fleet of refrigerators, toilets, and ranges that are the same model and hook up in the same way. They offer a standard set of appliances and fixtures that are provided in each unit, and they are serviced uniformly! Imagine if you had a fleet of 500 Supermicro 1U servers, and one of your colocation clients wanted to hook up a custom Ethernet switch made in Outer Mongolia. You'd probably say "no" too.
Regardless of how these panels hook up to the "grid" inside here, it would be nonstandard. The cord itself would snake through the door, onto the floor, somehow, without a dedicated conduit, and it'd be subject to damage, and the door would never close properly. The panels themselves would cover and conceal some part of the railing, and that is considered unsightly and unwanted; they don't want tenants up there with concealed balconies, much less clothes or junk hanging off of them.
The uniformity and conformity of each unit is key. It's like living in an HOA. When we sign the lease, we agree to keep our exteriors neat, tidy, and uniform. There are no flags or signs or stickers that we can put outside. It reduces controversy as well as easing the burden of maintenance and cleaning.
Many years ago, I was renting a very modern 2BR unit and I decided that one of the rooms really needed a ceiling fan (it was a hot summer in a chilly climate!) so I went to Home Depot, purchased a kit, and installed the ceiling fan where a dome light had been. I didn't... ask anyone... and I have no electrician's expertise, nor did I check whether the structure could support it. It must've been quite a surprise when they found it after I moved out!
> Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.
What wiring? Literally connect the setup to the regular power outlet, no fuzzing with wires or otherwise, probably any human who've connected some electrical gadget/device to a socket before could get these solar setups going in a couple of minutes.
Can't there can be over-current issues if you are not using a dedicated wall outlet for backfeeding the solar?
Consider a situation where the plugged-in solar inverter is capable of providing 15 amps into the circuit, but so is the breaker feeding the circuit from the panel. If you plug in something that can consume 30 amps, it will be able to do so by pulling 15 amps from each source without tripping the breaker, so you can end up with 30 amps traveling in your building wiring that is only sized for 15.
At least that's how I understand it. I don't know if any of the grid-tied inverters that can plug into a wall have some way of detecting and compensating for this. Clearly other countries have been able to come to a decision to allow it. I vaguely remember someone explaining that the 230V systems in Europe somehow mitigate the issue but I don't remember how.
The landlady probably didn't know that.
Yeah, so I guess when both the renter and the landlord doesn't understand the solution (or renter does understand, but didn't explain properly), it'll be a hard sell indeed.
> What wiring?
If you've got normal residential power outlets, then you've got wiring inside the walls. Those wires are sized for the number of amps that the individual circuit's fuse or breaker allows, plus some limited safety margin.
Depending on hidden-in-the-wall details of how a circuit's wiring is run, and where you plug in panels and electrical loads, it might be quite easy to overload those wires - without blowing the fuse or tripping the breaker.
Overloaded wires can get very hot, and electrical fires starting inside walls really is a thing.
EDIT: Adding https://www.ul.com/insights/safety-considerations-plug-photo...
> My unit has an individual circuit breaker box, but how would solar power be fed into such a system? It would be chaos, and the management would have no way of regulating or maintaining such a bizarre setup.
The balcony solar setups are sized to be small enough that they can be fed into standard systems.
There’s no “chaos”. It just offsets consumption a little bit. New electric meters have been able to account for or at least not get confused by reverse flow should it occur at the small levels that balcony solar setups might produce.
A solar backpack is a backpack with a relatively tiny solar panel. It's not designed to power an apartment. It's barely designed to power a laptop. You wouldn't be plugging one of these into the mains.
Solar systems are well understood, as is the business of connecting them to existing power. Magic boxes exist to handle exactly this problem. Connecting them up isn't hard, but installations usually require professional certification to stop people frying themselves and/or their wiring.
DIY solar makes no sense if you're paying your building for unmetered power.
Generally apartment solar can be a nice optional accessory, but very few apartments have the space for a system capable of powering the entire apartment for a significant part of the year.
> Our lease agreement has some concessions for potential satellite dishes and external TV antennas.
This may be because the FCC has pretty strict rules that require apartment buildings to permit dishes and antennas on personal areas like balconies.
Lack of similar laws for solar panels means that most landlords are going to just say "no" rather than take the risk.
And also liability for things falling out of windows.
Is that not also a concern for window AC units?
Yes. Which is why laws require brackets, etc. But landlords have to allow window air conditioners (installed properly, etc) because old people can die in the heat. They're less likely to want to accept liability for something not required by law. Air Conditioners also injure firefighters because they tend to fall during fires:
https://nypost.com/2026/01/06/us-news/nyc-bravest-hit-in-hea...
> how would solar power be fed into such a system
An inverter.
> management would have no way of regulating or maintaining such a bizarre setup
What kind of regulation is needed? What about this is bizarre? If you’re concerned that these systems might be a fire hazard, that’s already a problem (space heaters, heating blankets, hot plates, etc). If you’re concerned that these systems won’t play nicely on a shared AC line, that’s already a problem (e.g., motors). I don’t see anything “bizarre” here.
They provide a supply that bypasses the circuit's fuse. A malfunctioning device (not a dead short) might draw more current than its plug is rated for. E.g. a NEMA 5-15 plug is rated for 15A, it needs to be installed with 14AWG (minimum) wire, rated for 15A at +30°C temperature rise over ambient, and a 15A breaker. Loads on the circuit must not draw more than 80% of the circuit's rated current continuously, 0.8 * 15A * 120V = 1,440W (12A). US devices aren't required to be fused, it's possible for one to malfunction and draw more than the 12A max, without being a "dead short". If that happens and it draws, say, 16A, and you've got a 4A solar panel on the circuit then the breaker will see 12A, the solar panel will see 4A, and the wires in the circuit will see 16A, exceeding their rating & posing a fire hazard.
A lot of them just plug into a wall outlet.
These are not yet approved in Finland, one reason being that older houses might use thinner conductors to wall outlets that cannot handle higher wattages being fed from solar. Maybe fuses and circuit breakers can prevent problems, maybe not. I am not an electrician.
One fix might be a low ceiling on power output from solar units. Another fix might be to sell solar units that connect _only_ directly into a fusebox, completely bypassing in-wall wiring.
And then there is a question of island mode, so that when the power lines are down, and under repair, you don't accidentally electrocute a lineman.
OTOH maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about.
I live in Berlin and it's quite common here. I personally cannot have it because my balcony has no railing but a low wall that doesn't allow me to hang the solar panel. Plus, you need a power socket easily reachable and that's also a blocker for me, otherwise I would have installed it.
I read a good article on this technology on CNN.com last month:
https://www.cnn.com/clean-energy-solar-diy-balcony-backyard-...
I live in Virginia, and REALLY want to try this, but I am sure Dominion Virginia Power and my HOA would not be happy; rooftop solar is out of my price range. The article I provided a link to says they are trying to change the laws in the U.S. to enable everybody to do this, and I really hope they are successful.
Do these people have any idea how poor efficiency will be when you're mounting perpendicular to the ideal orientation?
This is pure vibes. It makes no sense. And it's really tacky too. Cheap panels hanging off balconies sounds horrible for the aesthetics of an area.
You would hope someone creates panels with cells arranged at an angle so that they point more towards the source. But by then the city will be full of the trashiest junk panels and people only care about the cheapest option anyway.
> Her 3.5 foot by 3.5 foot solar panel weighs about 25 pounds and is a half-inch thick. It can harvest about 220 watts of energy from the sun each day.
Grrrr. Watts is not a unit of energy.
As a holder of a physics degree this annoys me quite a lot. Journalists seem to have trouble keeping track of energy vs power. It's like saying my friends house is 5 miles per hour away.
/rant off
You have to just close your eyes and hum a requiem for the glory days. Like I do when questions are begged
Just wait until you see "kW/h" :)
But I think plug-in / balcony solar will be pretty cool. And I think there's a path to inexpensive, larger, safer grid-tie inverters which never backfeed, but prioritize solar input first and make up the difference with grid power.
For example, I'm imagining a box that would plug in to the wall, have a DC input from solar panels, and a power strip for loads supporting up to, ideally, a full 15A normal US 120V circuit.
Currently this box exists in the form of battery power station units (Bluetti, Ecoflow, Anker etc). But I think there could be a much less expensive form that could exist without the battery.
1lb/kg is a unit of acceleration approximately equal to 4.448m/s^2. Pound of weight, not mass, obviously. This is still more valid than almost anything in the American Journalist system of units!
>As a holder of a physics degree this annoys me quite a lot. Journalists seem to have trouble keeping track of energy vs power. It's like saying my friends house is 5 miles per hour away.
I've ranted endlessly about the outsized impact people with no expertise but a large audience have had on society. So so many people have the worldview shaped by individuals that cannot even bother to learn basics like watts and watt-hours for their "reporting".
I have this peeve too, but tbh it feels like most people make this mistake, and usually it is easy enough to guess what was intended.
I can never guess when they write about grid storage, because almost always the unit used is watts, but it can mean whatever.
With storage the watts are also important because it is a measure of how much power it can replace from other power plant sources which are also measured in watts. Admittedly, the time it will last is omitted, so a full energy calculation can't be done, but at least you know how many dirty peaker plants it replaces.
> Her 3.5 foot by 3.5 foot solar panel weighs about 25 pounds and is a half-inch thick. It can harvest about 220 watts of energy from the sun each day. It’s on the smaller end of available balcony solar panels. The panels can go up to almost 2,000 watts in capacity. A 1,200-watt panel is enough to power a window air conditioner unit, according to Bright Saver.
This whole paragraph is nonsense. A 2,000 watt panel is never going to go on a balcony (because it is huge for any residential balcony), and regardless of "capacity" a solar panel is not going to power a window AC unit without an intermediate storage, unless you want the compressor to shut down every time a cloud passes by.
And people complain about writing being AI generated. Is this kind of sloppy writing any better?
Why not being more considerate on how we use electricity? Low wattage lightbulbs, less laundry, shorter showers? Also since aesthetics don’t matter, let’s also hang clothes by the windows so we don’t use dryers.
New York already has some of the lowest energy usages in the US. Austerity will only get you so far, and is politically unpopular.
I wonder what the terminal velocity of a falling solar panel is...
About the same as that of a falling AC unit I reckon.
windows should, themselves, be solar panels. everywhere.
Solar panels absorb light. Windows transmit light. Solar panels stop windows from functioning as windows.
In office buildings where every wall is a window, the light can be too bright. Photovoltaic windows are like tinted windows that also provide power.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=photovoltaic+windows&ia=web
It's amusing how skeptical Americas are about these renewable projects which are completely commonplace in Europe and Asia. The biggest obstacle to expanding renewable energy in America, is Americans.
>The biggest obstacle to improving America, is Americans.
FTFY.
It’s same same with any change or improvement. Head firmly buried in sand.
It’s not hanging from a window… I’m having trouble picturing what that look like.
Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power#/media/Fil...
That's definitely not a window.
This can be dangerous for utility company workers.
When a line needs to be repaired, the technician takes steps to ensure the line isn’t carrying current from known sources. A panel plugged in by a civilian via a home outlet is not known. The technician can be killed by the unexpected current.
The panels are designed to not provide current if no current is detected on the mains. Otherwise you would also have a live plug at the end of the panel. Killing your own customers is typically not a good business strategy, so quite a lot of safety has been focused on ensuring this isn't a problem.
Not just designed not to provide current, in general they simply can't. They follow the phase from the mains (the sine curve of voltage and current), without the mains there isn't a phase to follow and they simply can't output anything
This was a contributing factor in the Spain blackout, because even large-scale solar and wind plants were using the same type of simple inverters
To be fair all large scale generators are designed to stop when suddenly 8GW of capacity goes missing.
> contributing factor in the Spain
Not really, the full report refuted this. Issue in Spain was much more nuanced. Mostly related to lax voltage controls and outdated and slow control mechanisms at the grid, high voltage net.
It can be dangerous to backfeed (which is why you're supposed to have an interlock for a generator inlet, ensuring utility power is disconnected). But:
1. These grid tie inverters are designed and tested to shut off completely if there's no grid power. (This is a big design tradeoff: it means they don't provide any power during a grid power outage, even if it's very sunny out.)
2. Even if I had a beefy generator that was unsafely backfeeding my house while the utility power was still connected, the generator would be trying to power not just my house, but all my neighbors too! And the circuit breaker and/or inverter on the generator would likely trip and shut down almost instantly.
There's still a possible risk from #2, especially if the downed wire being repaired is relatively local (i.e. your house only).
But I think #1 and #2 mitigate this risk very well.
On point 1, you can pay extra to get an inverter that does "islanding mode". During an external outage the inverter stops sending power out of the house but keeps supplying power inside the house. Whole-house backup batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall (and competitors) also have this capability.
Anyone who is looking for a generator to power their house during a regional outage should look into other types of generation that will do islanding mode.
FUD. Every inverter currently on the market immediately drops the connection if the grid isn't present, there is absolutely no way this could happen with these puny inverters.
That's exactly right, and the very reason the germans figured out a solution.