Plug in solar

Baldytyke88

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/07/23/solar-balconies-are-booming-in-germany-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-popular-home-

There was an item on radio four about a booming trend of pug in solar, in Germany. I got the impression that you just plug it into your 13amp socket and it gets used by your appliances. Have I got that wrong, is it legal in the UK?

I don't think it would suit me, but it is interesting.

lookbook

Seems like a good idea 💡 

Reed_Richards

That would not be legal in the UK.  What you can have here is solar plus a unit that incorporates a battery, an inverter and a socket that you can plug your appliance into.  These things are often sold to people with mobile homes but you can have them in your house too, if you wish.  

Baldytyke88

Reed_Richards said:

That would not be legal in the UK.  What you can have here is solar plus a unit that incorporates a battery, an inverter and a socket that you can plug your appliance into.  These things are often sold to people with mobile homes but you can have them in your house too, if you wish.  

So they would work in UK homes, but they are not legal. Why legal in Germany but not in the UK?

BarelySentientAI

Baldytyke88 said:

Reed_Richards said:

That would not be legal in the UK.  What you can have here is solar plus a unit that incorporates a battery, an inverter and a socket that you can plug your appliance into.  These things are often sold to people with mobile homes but you can have them in your house too, if you wish.  

So they would work in UK homes, but they are not legal. Why legal in Germany but not in the UK?

At the risk of stating the obvious - the UK is not Germany?

Many laws, standards and regulations are different between different countries.

Reed_Richards

Baldytyke88 said:

Reed_Richards said:

That would not be legal in the UK.  What you can have here is solar plus a unit that incorporates a battery, an inverter and a socket that you can plug your appliance into.  These things are often sold to people with mobile homes but you can have them in your house too, if you wish.  

So they would work in UK homes, but they are not legal. Why legal in Germany but not in the UK?

Read the article

Belgium, notably, has banned plug-in solar devices over fears about the impact of having unregistered systems feeding into the electricity grid.

The UK takes the same cautious approach as Belgium.

wrf12345

Some American States allow this as well. Best you can do here is to make a separate circuit not connected to the existing one and have the panels connected to an inverter/battery but not sure how insurance companies would react if the battery or circuit caused a fire. There are also some ways to run DC directly off the panels or battery if you have suitable DC appliances, YouTube videos on all of this.

It's a pity, given 400 watt panels are nearly down to fifty quid a go, that some relaxation of the rules won't come to the UK but there is a billion quid industry reliant on people or government paying way over the odds for solar so not much hope of that.

Reed_Richards

The alternative is to get something like one of these "Solar generators" https://uk.growattpower.com/pages/solar-generators and plug your appliances into the generator.

wrf12345

except they either don't take much solar input or are very expensive

Reed_Richards

Less solar capacity or more expensive than the "solar balconies" sold in Germany?  The German ones will have a cord with a plug on the end, the UK ones will have sockets.  Otherwise they're the same thing.

wrf12345

German systems are putting up to 800W (two std panels) into an inverter so they are not the same as generators which, at the cheaper end, put 100W into battery/inverter setup and would basically be useless in poor weather - unless they allow connection of 800W but only use 100W, which seems unlikely.