Robinsun Performance

In short: up to 50% of the electricity cost.

A plug & play solar kit produces solar energy for self consumption at home. The energy it produces is used directly by your household appliances. This avoids your household having to buy that energy from your power company, lowering your power bills.

Your savings are therefore determined by

• how much energy your kit produces
• how much you pay your power company per kWh, with all extra costs and taxes included

For example, if your kit produces 1.500 kWh per year and you pay €0,30/kWh to your power company, you save €450 per year (1.500 kWh x €0,30/kWh = €450). You can calculate how much you can save at your home address with our Savings Calculator.

How much the savings are on your overall electricity bill depends on how much you consume in total. A house consumes much more than an apartment, so the effect of a solar kit is likely higher for an apartment. The more people you are in the household, the higher your total consumption. Since plug & play solar kits are limited to 800 W by law, for households of 1-3 people the savings of a plug & play solar kit will be higher as a percentage of total electricity consumption than for larger households that consume more. Also, if you have a lot of high consumption devices on for a lot of time, like air conditioners, water boilers, ovens etc, your consumption is likely much higher than the 800 W of peak output your kit can deliver.

But take into consideration that some savings is better than no savings at all. And the higher your energy consumption is, the more likely it is that you will consume 100% of your kit’s power, maximizing your economic returns.

In short: no.

Your kit produces electricity depending on the intensity of sunshine your solar panels are exposed to. This is not at the same level all day long. Starting from zero at night, during the morning solar production increases and peaks around noon, only to slowly decrease again until the sun goes down. Your kit’s energy production curve follows the same pattern, and usually resembles a bell curve, with a peak at noon.

Also, keep in mind that any solar panel’s power output is measured in Wp (Watt peak), a theoretical measurement unit that indicates the maximum (peak) output of a panel under perfect testing conditions. In real life these conditions are seldom met, so even at noon your panels will only get close to but not reach their indicated Wp levels.

We have recently launched a new generation of plug & play solar kits, that uses bifacial solar panels. These can generate power from both sides of the panel, capturing sunshine that hits the back of the panel as well as overall reflection of sunshine. This can increase a panel’s production of up to 30% in theory, in practice this is rather in the 15% range. These panels can get very close to their declared Wp output for longer periods during the day, depending on their installation location, angle and orientation.

In short: absolutely yes.

Your terrace might offer you a variety of options to install your plug & play solar kit. Select the location with the most sunshine exposure, no shade, and where an installation is safe. Customers with bigger terraces (like roof tops) generally prefer to use our Performance kits with a 20° mount, since these give the highest production levels, are very easy to set up (see video) and can be moved quickly if needed.

If you have a pergola on your terrace, you might want to use that structure to put panels on it, for example with a Basic Performance kit. If your pergola has no inclination, you can add one with our 20° mount and fix that to the pergola.

Your terrace railing might also be a good location to install a kit, although you should consider the safety aspect of hanging 20-25 kg solar panels on your railing. We don’t recommend that for railings higher than 4 meters and with pedestrian traffic under them. For these installations, our Light kits are the far better option.

You can also drill your kit to a wall, we have mount structures for this application as well.