Word of caution before pushing the button
I’ve been desperate to get plug in solar. I’ve just had the garden landscaped and have a 4 meter south west facing balustrade. Ended up going DIY with 2 JA panels and an ecoflow stream with a 2 panel balcony kit.
I have had to return the lot for a refund. I know this is all on me for not paying enough attention and running in and doing it on the cheap but maybe it will help others not do the same.
Panel size and fitting. I thought I’d measured up properly but when it came to it there was absolutely no way I could get the panels to fit on the balustrade. They are much bigger than you think! The panels were reported with their shortest side (portrait) on city plumbing so that’s what I measured for but I need to put them longest side (landscape) for the balcony bracket. Balustrade was long enough, but not tall enough to accept the top and bottom brackets. There was no way I could attach them. I naively thought the attachment points could be varied but the bracket needs to attach at the very top and very bottom of the panels and unless you have a very tall balcony at least the same height as the panel the bottom arms don’t extend out far enough to attach the panel. I could look for another bracket now I know this but it was an awful lot of hassle getting to this point.
No path to power. I thought I could just tack the cable along the bottom of the fence and then to the plug. It would need to cross one patio slab so was going to put one of those wire protectors over that one slab. Apparently that is a no go has to be armoured cable buried or the rubber cable in conduit the whole way and not under any foot fall. There is no way I can do that without a load of extra cost and digging up the patio.
Alternative mounting options are prohibitively expensive. 2 panels could go parallel to south facing wall but will lose efficiency as can’t be tilted because of the regs and no way I can do this myself without the cost of a professional. Also have space for ground ballast mounting. When I priced the kit up, by the time I‘d added all the bits it came to more than the panels and inverter combined, essentially doubling the cost.
I ended up aborting the whole thing. If you have the space and can easily mount yourself and can route power easily then it’s a no brainer but double check you can easily do these things before you order the kit or your costs are going to quickly get out of control.
I may try and revisit it when the kits come out and there are a few more examples around of mounting kits being used in the UK but I think I’m out of the early adopter gang, the experience broke me!