alt Hacker NewsWild. I wonder how they deal with the back feeding issue. Is there something about the home wiring in those countries that prevents it? (or do they just not care and line workers know to check if a line is truly dead?)
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The microinverter just turns itself off if it doesn’t detect line voltage in the outlet. In the U.S. evidently it’s required to also have some sort of backflow preventer in the panel as well.
The device detects that and prevents back feeding. So in case of a power outage it completely shuts itself down.
it is actually simpler. The inverter stops power flow if it does not detect a grid voltage.
The actual power coming from a balcony setup is tiny, a thousand watts ballpark. The typical house will consume the vast majority of that capacity.
Even if some flows back to the grid, it will likely be consumed by losses in the transformer and wires.
if there is no power, the inverter shuts down and doesn't feed power in.
I feel the real danger of back feeding is not that american line workers can't be bothered to check if the line is truly dead before starting to work. It's that the line could be reenergized at any time.