Easy-to-install solar panels that plug into a regular outlet are getting attention just as Americans are worried about rising energy costs. That’s because these plug-in or balcony solar panels start shaving off part of a homeowner’s or renter’s utility bill right away.

“A year ago, nobody was talking about this,” says Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a California nonprofit group that advocates for plug-in solar. The panels are already popular in Germany, where more than 1.2 million of the small plug-in systems are registered with the German government.

For the panels to become more widely available in the U.S., state lawmakers are proposing bills that eliminate complicated utility connection agreements, which are required for larger rooftop solar installations and, most utilities say, should apply to plug-in solar too. Those agreements, along with permitting and other installation costs, can double the price of solar panels.

  • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world
    101·
    1 day ago

    So I work with public utilities / co-ops (different from private utilities). One of the challenges I consistently see is the utilities are handed a bunch of regulations without the funding to adequately support them. This strikes me as similar. Lineman safety is a real concern. I suspect it could be mitigated, but those mitigations probably come with a cost. The easiest fix is to fund lineman safety measures in the bill.

    • rainwall@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      All of these systems are designed to prevent backflow when they have no utility input voltage. Its baked into them.

      There should be zero extra danger to lineman unless people are DIYing these systems, which they can do now with or without a law.

    • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
      3·
      11 hours ago

      Laws without enforcement are just suggestions. You can lump regulations in there too.

      • lauha@lemmy.world
        9·
        22 hours ago

        A/C doesn’t but lineman trying to fix a power outage and you feeding power to the grid does. Generators are supposed to be switched over so you don’t backflow to the grid during a power outage

    • gdog05@lemmy.world
      8·
      24 hours ago

      My understanding is that it’s a safety issue. Currently, substations have source power shutoffs so any lead-in power source can be easily cut off to replace equipment. But, they’re not set to handle other power inputs in the substation grid. I’ve never fully understood this reasoning as once power is handed off from one substation to the other (to prevent outages) it should be completely dead to do maintenance. It might be my ignorance on it but I can’t see how this is a problem and is likely a method by power companies to reduce solar usage by forcing expensive equipment between the grid and household.

    • Fluffy Kitty Cat@slrpnk.netEnglish
      52·
      1 day ago

      No one designed it that way, but you can safely deliver a few hundred w and that’s before we start redesigning electrical the standards to be by directional which will probably start happening now. I had the thought that you could put a battery between the panels and the wall so that you could deliver 400 watts all day with the battery as a buffer so you have more than 400 watts of panels