Over 4 Million Sets! The Next Blue Ocean? 2024 Latest European Balcony Photovoltaic Report!
Balcony photovoltaics (PV) sparked a craze in Europe last year, with Germany alone installing 4 million sets! Recently, the European Photovoltaic Association released its first balcony PV market report. How large is this balcony PV "cake"? Will it become the next blue ocean market? Let's break it down.
1. Balcony Installation Rate Below 30%
First, an interesting point: despite the name "balcony PV," less than 30% of users actually install systems on balconies. In reality, "balcony PV" is more accurately called "plug-and-play PV" or "DIY solar storage." Typical installation locations include:
The most common installation sites are actually rooftops and yards, similar to this:
Installation proportions by location are as follows:
Notably, about 52.4% of Germany's population are renters. Germany has now passed regulations lifting landlords' restrictions on tenants installing "balcony PV." As this demographic adopts the technology, plug-and-play PV systems on apartment balconies will increasingly become the norm, truly living up to the "balcony PV" name.
2. Germany Leads by a Wide Margin
Germany is unequivocally Europe's largest balcony PV market! According to the German Solar Association, 435,000 balcony PV systems were registered in Germany in 2024. This means that for every 5 PV systems installed in 2024, at least 2 were balcony PV.
As shown in the graph above, balcony PV experienced explosive growth in Germany last year, with 2024 installations exceeding the sum of all previous years. In 2024, Germany's balcony PV capacity reached approximately 426 MW, accounting for 2.6% of the total PV installed capacity of 16.1 GW. By the end of 2024, cumulative registered installations exceeded 780,000 units, with a cumulative capacity surpassing 700 MW. The average system size also increased from 800 W in 2023 to nearly 1 kW in 2024.
Due to their plug-and-play nature and previous lack of regulation, many systems were connected to the grid informally. Thus, the actual number of systems far exceeds registered figures. "For every registered system, there are 2-3 unregistered ones," according to HTW Berlin. It is estimated that the actual number of balcony PV systems in Germany could be as high as 1.5-4 million.
3. Other European Markets
Key balcony PV markets in Europe also include France, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, and Italy.
Outside Germany, markets remain relatively small. By the end of 2024, France's DSO (ENEDIS) reported a cumulative installed capacity of 34 MW for <1 kW PV systems. In Austria, annual installations of micro-PV systems reached 10-15 MW in 2023 and 2024, with approximately 20,000 systems registered annually and growing. Since legalizing balcony PV in early 2023, Lithuania has seen 350 users register systems.
The German Photovoltaic Association estimates that up to 4-5 million balcony PV systems are operational across Europe (1.5-4 million in Germany).
