If a balcony power station could still supply electricity in the event of a power outage, that would be very helpful in many cases. Unfortunately, that is not possible.
In case of power failure: balcony power station unfortunately does not help
In the event of a power failure, a balcony power station unfortunately does not function as a backup power source. The way the inverter works prevents the possibility of bridging the power failure.
- A photovoltaic cell basically supplies direct current.
- In order to feed this generated electricity into the normal household grid, the direct current must be converted to alternating current with a grid frequency of 50 hertz (Hz).
- For this purpose, an inverter is located behind the photovoltaic cell to take over this job. However, the inverter itself has no way of generating an oscillation reference of 50Hz.
- Since 1995, all inverters in this energy sector have been designed to use the grid frequency as a reference for their oscillation generation.
- However, in the event of a power failure, this reference is missing, meaning that the inverter cannot work and the potentially available energy from the balcony power plant cannot be used.