As part of a package of measures aimed at reducing the impact of rising gas prices on consumers’ energy bills, introduced by the UK government, plug-in solar panels will be sold in major retailers including Lidl and Amazon.
While the government said it planned to investigate the use of the technology in Britain published the British Solar Roadmap in June 2025 this was the case measures accelerated in response to the fear of a new energy crisis.
This means that the BS 7671 wiring rules and the G98 code, which governs the smallest connections to the electricity grid, have been changed. Plug-in solar panels with a capacity of up to 800 watts will be for sale.
The inverter is connected to the electricity grid of a home using a standard 3-pin plug, hence the name, without the intervention of an electrician. The technology is ideal for properties that do not have access to rooftop PV installations, or that will not be built with solar installed in the future. Future houses standard.
The government’s reporting on the change notes that plug-in solar energy is already widely deployed in Germany. After the government streamlined the registration process there in April 2024, the use of the technology, also known as ‘balcony solar energy’, saw a significant increase.
In the first half of that year, 200 MW of solar energy was deployed on balconies on around 220,000 systems, according to figures from Germany’s federal grid agency, the Bundesnetzagentur. According to data from the German trade association BSW Solar, the country passed the one million installation mark in June 2025.
Per one report on our sister sitePV technology, published in 2024, small-scale installations such as balcony systems benefit in particular from modules with higher efficiency and higher power. Often, interdigitated back contact (IBC) or heterojunction technology (HJT) modules are the technology of choice for these distributed installations, as they provide the greatest conversion efficiency for the available space.
More recently, the California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee voted unanimously 14-0 (with 3 abstentions). in favor of a bill for solar energy on balconies.
In addressing that new legislation, Senate Bill 868 (SB 868) – also known as the Plug and Play Solar Act – would allow people in California to install small systems of up to 1,200 watts (AC) on a building’s electrical system and exempt them from the requirement to connect the small systems to the electrical distribution system.
These developments are in line with energy market analyst Wood Mackenzie’s predictions for 2026, with one of the three market trends expected to be a boost to solar energy on balconies. Read more about that at PV technology.
