00:00Kamil is taking care of his local power station on his balcony.
00:06He's one of thousands of Viennese who recently installed the device.
00:11Regularly hosing down the panels clears off dust, further increasing electricity production.
00:17Installing the device only took three minutes.
00:20I'm just trying to keep my running costs low and this power station is pretty good for that.
00:25The 37-year-old says in summer he can reduce the power bill for his one-person household by up to 40 percent,
00:32which means saving roughly 20 dollars a month.
00:36Right now we are producing 611 watts.
00:42I've worked out how much basic consumption I have per day, including the fridge and the PlayStation's standby mode.
00:48I cover all that with this power station.
00:51In 2023, roughly 5,000 city residents officially installed similar plants, which cost around 300 dollars.
00:59However, suppliers believe the number to be significantly higher, as many people may not declare them.
01:05They believe the number of users will continue to rise.
01:09The Austrian government has just introduced a law to make it easier to install solar panels on balconies.
01:15Until now, neighbors could easily object if they felt it would damage the building's aesthetics.
01:20Now opponents will need tougher arguments, such as possible safety hazards.
01:25The devices plug into regular electricity sockets and are limited to producing 800 watts each,
01:32in order to not overload the city's electricity grid, which will receive any surplus.
01:37For individual households, we can already see that balcony systems can cover 10 to 20 percent of electricity consumption at home.
01:48We are confident that the boom will continue.
01:53Regulators also believe the falling price of the solar panels, that now cost less than half of what they did last year,
02:02looks set to convince many more Austrians to start producing their own power, even if they live in an apartment.
02:09Johannes Blechberger, CGTN, Vienna.
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