Plug-in solar panels are now legal in Great Britain!
Hopefully this reduces the barrier to people getting solar at home.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/households-can-save-as-plug-in-solar-panels-come-to-market
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@neil this is garbage. all it serves is to distract from a lack of investment in real solar. frankly I despise this idea that solar is a primarily residential technology
any significant amount of plugin solar is a serious risk because these cheap controllers' backflow protection can't be trusted.
@neil
We worked out it would take 8 years to pay back. Saving us £70 to £100 a year. We are late 70s early 80s in a listed housing estate
@neil very annoying this excludes battery storage! But finally some positive movement.. hurrah!
@neil Thanks for the info.
Dumb question to more knowledgeable people: how does the "plug in" bit work?
Does it mean the solar panel has sockets that you plug your devices directly into (and your Xbox turns off if the sun goes in, assuming no battery), or that it plugs in to your domestic mains and reduces the power draw from the external grid?
Panels --> inverter --> plug inverter into a mains socket.
Quite incredible really, IMHO!
@neil @julianlawson of course the ideal solution would be to also have a battery between the inverter and mains socket, so you could store the energy you generate but don’t use. But those need to be installed and certified by a qualified sparky (and also benefit from higher capacity panels and inverter).
At least this means a much lower barrier to entry for many people, as it’s relatively safe to self-install with the 800W cap.
@neil This is good news. The cynical in me finds it weird that the timing coincides with the advent of so many data centers. Maybe is a way to liberate some grid capacity or prepare people for higher bills?
Anyways, more solar is always good regardless.
@neil and just like that, the whining of a million electricians and their electrical trade bodies began.
@neil I've already got solar on the boat and even I'm considering supplementing it with a plug in for a bit extra
@neil Great news!
Our experience here in Germany suggests that the decision whether to install these systems is a no-brainer. Recently, one of the discount supermarkets here had 2 panels + inverter for sale for 205€.
At current prices, they should pay for themselves in 4-5 years, even under conservative assumptions.
Germany recently updated the rules so that renters don’t need the landlord’s permission to install panels - that’s helpful too.
@neil 2-3 years ago, we paid 700€ for the same thing. Not sure we’ll ever break even.
On the other hand, it’s the least stressful technology I’ve ever used. Screw in the fasteners, hang the panels, plug them in, and you’re done. Takes an hour, if that much.
From then on, you just get a bit of free power whenever there’s enough sun. No further effort needed.
@neil No certified kit is on sale yet.
It seems likely, given the companies involved, that now it is legal to sell them, they will start to be sold?
@neil @geoffl It seems like a pretty firm set of regulations. You have to buy a “kit”. The whole kit needs to be approved. There’s a lot you still can’t do.
This is where you can see approvals: https://connect-direct.energynetworks.org/device-databases/search-gen?device_type_id=14
This site is an excellent overall tracker: https://4billionyearson.org/plug-in-solar-uk
@neil Once they start producing kits that manage to get certification, yes. No idea how long that will take. Every one that was tested recently failed on electromagnetic emissions, probably because manufacturers cheaped out on component selection and sheilding.
I've just picked up 8 failed inverters to repair (for a different project) and add extra protection to. All blown mosfets that failed short and pulled maximum current from batteries. Not ideal.
@neil The big problem is that non certified kit won't be covered by home insurance. The risk of fires is reduced without battery storage but if a fire is traced back to non certified kit then people could lose everything.
It may be helpful but only if you can include batteries in the system.
Looking into the options now 😉
The most useful thing about batteries would be to keep stuff running during a power cut.
But as far as I know, none of the current, fixed or plug-in, installations allow this.
> keep stuff running during a power cut.
This was a key criterion for our solar installation. It involved extra expense - an island box - but I reckon that it was worthwhile, even though, at the moment, we have few power cuts, and those we have are of short duration.
I have kept the UPSs on my servers, so this is in addition to those.
How does that work? Is it a separate power supply to some or all of the appliances?
I did do a web search for "island box" but the results seemed mostly to relate to food and holidays and I quickly lost the will to live.
I am not quite the right person to be able to describe this in detail, but in essence, the mains feed, and the line out of our battery, both go into this "island" box, and, on the other side of the island is our consumer unit, and thus our home's electrical system.
If the mains stops, then as long as there is charge in the batteries, power goes through the island.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the house supply needs to stay synchronised to the grid because if that were not so, when the mains comes back on, it would all end badly.
Problem is, if the mains is out, there's nothing for the home installation to synchronise against.
My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the island box isolates the house supply from the mains in the event of a power cut. Then, when the mains comes back, it performs a synchronisation of the house supply prior to reconnecting the mains from the grid. Probably all happens in milliseconds with minimal disturbance to the house supply.
> when the mains comes back, it performs a synchronisation of the house supply prior to reconnecting the mains from the grid. Probably all happens in milliseconds
Yes - a box in the island does this.
But it takes about three minutes, once the mains is back on, rather than milliseconds.
We have photovoltaics but couldn't afford batteries at the time, even with the (modest) grant.
May be time to reconsider that now if the island box option is available to us.
The UK safety specification is more stringent than that of Germany, where the technology is already widely used…
Major retailers, such as Currys, B&Q, Screwfix and Amazon have worked with government on the rollout of plug-in solar and will soon have them available to purchase in stores and online.
Why does the expression “regulatory capture” float into my mind?
@neil just as its started raining....
"This can run a typical fridge, television, Wi-Fi router, laptop, phone charger and an Xbox S operating at once when the sun is shining." Fairly specific for a government piece... why not a PS5 or an Atari 2600+?
@neil I can’t help feeling that it’s extremely poor planning to launch plug in solar just as solar output is about to plunge towards the winter minimum.
@neil not batteries, not zero VAT, and not covered by your home insurance. Definitely do 2 panels and a micro inverter if you can though!
We are VERY happy with our ‘plug-in’ solar system with 4 panels and a battery that we had professionally installed earlier this year. The VAT savings covered half of the labour costs, and I wasn’t the one lugging massive panels around!
@neil Oooh, that IS good.
@neil Oh! THAT'S why there are dark skies and thunderstorms. It's always the government's fault. 😉
More seriously, this is brilliant news. For a smaller upfront fee folks can get a technology that will save them money on their energy bills and renters can take it with them when they move.
@John_Loader @john @neil that's what I thought, are they even going to still be working that long?
@Tattooed_Mummy @John_Loader @john @neil the panels themselves, almost certainly - solar panels have an official lifespan of nearly 30 years and even after that it's loss of percentages in efficiency not sudden death. The inverters and controllers might have a shorter lifespan though, and I'd be very wary of anything that needs a proprietary app to operate
