Solar panels for roofs, balconies, lawns all exist.
But why hasn’t solar panel blinds and curtains taken off?
To me it seems really good for people who live in apartments and want to get more juice from the windows.
Solar panels don’t just get plugged into whatever. They require optimizers and inverters. They need to be set on a different circuit so they can be separated from everything else and shut off independently. Also there can be batteries involved.
I have automated blinds, and they are expensive. Solar charger was $49 which isn’t horrible.
Different take from everyone else in the comments. Wiring. There is something new being made popular called a balcony solar panel. It hangs off the side of your appt balcony and plugs in to an outlet. The electricity generated gets added to your appt’s wiring. The problem is regulation. Most solar installs require agreements and inspections between you, the local city govt, and the utility company. I believe they’re pretty popular in Germany because they set up the regulations to handle it. But many places don’t want unregulated power generation. The concern being when there’s a power outage, linemen need to fix stuff, and if they’re expecting a line to be dead due to power being out, you can injure them by dumping electricity on the grid. My solar panels were inspected to verify when the grid goes down, they don’t put any electricity onto the grid.
You raise a good point!
I plan to use EcoFlow powerbanks in self power mode to have them be a a UPS that is supplemented bt the sun, which lets me get by the “no power into wall” limitations.
Flexible conductors are very expensive (source: worked in automation). If you use cheap ones they’ll fail and either the panels won’t make power, and/or you’ll have an exposed shock hazard.
Besides, we have way more walls than windows. Fixed panels make way more sense.
Thanks for bringing up flexible connectors! I didn’t consider that before.
Would blinds be better for not needing more flexible connectors, or worse?
The whole thing would need to be flexible, AND you’d need a power-capable slew connector, which would not be cheap, even at volume.




