As I’d replied to a sister comment of yours, I didn’t even consider that the author could be talking about actually available power, so that’s on me. I did go re-read it and I really don’t think that’s how it is meant though. I do think they are just ignorant on this point.
That being said, “balcony solar” isn’t limited to 800 W in panels. It’s limited to an 800 W inverter, but 2 kW for the panels. So you can have quite a bit more capacity in solar compared to the inverter, which also means that worse weather impacts you less. When you got a full sunny day, you can have the full 800 W for much longer, if not most of the day, as it’ll essentially be limited further down the chain. On the other hand I do think the most common size actually installed is much closer to also only have 800-900 Wp (basically 2 panels), which is the most commonly offerend (and presumably sold) kit size.
We also have roughly 8 kWp installed, and obviously on cloudy or dark winter days we’re an order of magnitude away from that number. There are days where we break 40 kWh in production, and there are days where we barely make it to 1 kWh. That low is very rare, even in winter or on dense, cloudy days, so I’d consider 4 kWh a more realistic minimum value. We have relatively detailed monitoring of most (relevant) consumers, which is why I have a somewhat good idea of how much our house consumes in practice. Before this full size installation, we had a 2 panel balcony solar “test setup” for quite a while. It was actually quite a (positive) surprise on how many days we essentially covered the majority of our daylight usage with these panels. Obviously not for the big-ticket consumers, but even a washer/dryer will be mostly covered.
As I’d replied to a sister comment of yours, I didn’t even consider that the author could be talking about actually available power, so that’s on me. I did go re-read it and I really don’t think that’s how it is meant though. I do think they are just ignorant on this point.
That being said, “balcony solar” isn’t limited to 800 W in panels. It’s limited to an 800 W inverter, but 2 kW for the panels. So you can have quite a bit more capacity in solar compared to the inverter, which also means that worse weather impacts you less. When you got a full sunny day, you can have the full 800 W for much longer, if not most of the day, as it’ll essentially be limited further down the chain. On the other hand I do think the most common size actually installed is much closer to also only have 800-900 Wp (basically 2 panels), which is the most commonly offerend (and presumably sold) kit size.
We also have roughly 8 kWp installed, and obviously on cloudy or dark winter days we’re an order of magnitude away from that number. There are days where we break 40 kWh in production, and there are days where we barely make it to 1 kWh. That low is very rare, even in winter or on dense, cloudy days, so I’d consider 4 kWh a more realistic minimum value. We have relatively detailed monitoring of most (relevant) consumers, which is why I have a somewhat good idea of how much our house consumes in practice. Before this full size installation, we had a 2 panel balcony solar “test setup” for quite a while. It was actually quite a (positive) surprise on how many days we essentially covered the majority of our daylight usage with these panels. Obviously not for the big-ticket consumers, but even a washer/dryer will be mostly covered.