Electricity prices are rising, and there is no chance of reversing this trend. To avoid paying high bills, which are often too burdensome for the home budget, and at the same time choose an environmentally friendly, non-air polluting energy source, it is worth investing in photovoltaic panels.
Photovoltaics , used to obtain electricity from solar energy with the help of special panels, is becoming more and more popular in Poland and around the world. The use of this solution allows you to significantly reduce electricity bills and at the same time fight air pollution. The sun is the most ecological and completely free source of energy. If we live in a single-family house, it is easiest to install photovoltaic panels on the roof. However, if our apartment is located in a block of flats or a block of flats... we can also invest in photovoltaics on the balcony .
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Can you install photovoltaic panels on a balcony?
Of course you can. For this purpose, the so-called photovoltaic balustrades. From the technical and legal point of view, a photovoltaic installation mounted on a balcony does not differ from a regular prosumer installation, e.g. photovoltaics on the roof of a single-family building. Like the roof one, it consists of an appropriately selected number of photovoltaic modules and an inverter. The differences lie mainly in decision-making, investment financing, type of connection and size of the installation.
Requiring a permit to install photovoltaic modules on a balcony
The installation of photovoltaic panels in multi-family buildings managed by cooperatives or communities differs from ordinary prosumer installation (i.e. in your own single-family home) at the decision-making level. It concerns the common parts of the building, and in accordance with the Act of June 24, 1994 on the ownership of premises, everything that is visible from the outside and permanently connected to the body of the block belongs to all residents. This also applies to balcony railings.
Therefore, whether we can install photovoltaic panels on our balcony is determined by the statute of the cooperative or housing community and the will of its members or management board. Therefore, it is important to determine whether the cooperative (if we have a cooperative premises) acts as the owner or as the manager.
To undertake an investment, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the community or cooperative. To do so, you must submit an application along with the installation design. The project, let us add, is usually created by the company that will be responsible for carrying out the installation. Without completing this formality, it is not possible to install photovoltaics on the balcony. Information regarding the conditions for making changes to the common parts of the building should be found in the statutes of the cooperative or community.
Rules for settling photovoltaics on the balcony
A home photovoltaic installation can be connected to the public grid (on-grid) or not (off-grid). In both cases, we benefit financially, but in the case of an on-grid installation, we return part of the energy obtained to the grid. What we do not use to pay for the energy consumed will be credited to our account, but only up to 20%. overproduction values. The rest is taken over by the plant for free. Therefore, photovoltaics is the more profitable the more electricity we use and store for our own needs.
What about photovoltaics on the balcony ? Due to the limited surface of the balustrade, each installation of photovoltaic panels on the balcony produces too little electricity to make it worthwhile to connect it to the public power grid. Therefore, an off-grid installation is profitable, generating electricity only for the needs of a specific apartment in a block of flats, which electricity is consumed on an ongoing basis. In other words, we will be billed as before, only we will receive lower bills.
Subsidies for photovoltaic panels on the balcony
When installing photovoltaics in single-family homes, you can benefit from funding from numerous EU and government programs, such as Moje Prąd. In the case of installing photovoltaic panels on a balcony, obtaining funding is much more difficult. Balconies are too small to accommodate an installation with an electrical power above 2 kW, and this installed power is the lower limit for granting the subsidy.
However, all is not lost, because you can apply for a preferential loan for ecological purposes, or think about installing photovoltaics on the roof of the block.