Why Balcony Solar Panels Haven’t Taken Off in the US
Why Balcony Solar Panels Haven’t Taken Off in the US
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.
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Affording a balcony might be step one though.
I wanted an apartment with a balcony but they're all $500+ more a month in rent then I'm already paying.
This isn't for filthy renters
they call them "rentoids" now
Having lived in a rental for many many years the inability to make small mods is SO annoying.
But this does beg the question, who OWNS a balcony. 99% of the home owners I know have single family houses. Granted I live in the south so owning an apartment is not the norm but I assume some people own an apartment in places like New York? But I’d assume people do?
I tried to look it up and from what I could find only about 15-17% of housing units in the US are apartments, and of those only about 15% own. So maybe 2% even have the opportunity. And this is assuming THOSE units have balconies, which I’m assuming only a small percentage of that 2% do. I’d think this is a major factor to balcony solar not taking off.
Owned apartments are just referred to as condos and presumably the condo owner owns the balcony while the "HOA/COA" owns the building.
Why? Landlords usually have more capital accessible to make this kind of move.
Because tenants pay for their own electricity so there's no direct incentive for the owners to install solar in order to reduce a bill that someone else pays.
I'm paying $850/mo. for my 2-roomer, with a glassed in balcony. Would definitely forego my balcony if I could pay only 350 for it, but that's a pipedream. $500 upcharge for a balcony is nuts.
Then again, my dear friend spontaneously got her rent increased by like $1500/month a couple years back, and that sort of practice would be illegal where I live, so I could see how charging $500 more per month for a balcony would be a thing.