Across Germany, more than 1 million people had installed solar panels on their balconies as of last month. But those are just the officially registered systems. The actual figures could be three times as high, according to government estimates.
Though each installation is small, the aggregate electricity generated from these plug-in solar panels is helping Germany reach its renewable energy targets.
Is the U.S. next?
It’s complicated. Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar, refers to small-scale solar systems that can be installed without an electrician or permission from a local utility. It is certainly closer to taking off in the U.S. than it was six months ago. The technology’s backers hope more hurdles will be cleared before the year is out.
This is happening largely thanks to a small-but-committed assortment of policymakers and solar power supporters who are working to make it more accessible.
There are two main barriers. First, there are local utility rules, many of which limit what residents can install without permission. And some would-be customers are waiting for the release of a key safety standard from an independent testing company.
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The Early Adopters
Victoria Augustine, an environmental activist and resident of New York City’s Queens borough, was one of the first buyers of a Flex 200 plug-in panel system released earlier this summer by Bright Saver, a nonprofit group based in California that promotes balcony solar.
On Aug. 1, she zip-tied the panel onto a wrought iron fence on her porch. She plugged it into an outlet, making sure it wasn’t sharing the circuit with any other appliances. The whole process took less than an hour, including a trip to the hardware store for extra zip ties.
There was no visit from an electrician or approvals from her local utility. A Bright Saver employee helped her set up a phone app to track the system’s output.
And that was it: The panels were generating electricity, albeit just a little. When the sun is shining, the 200-watt system will be able to offset roughly enough electricity to power a small appliance. The Flex 200 could save Augustine an estimated $37 to $50 per year in electricity costs.
Bright Saver, a nonprofit group, began selling the Flex 200 for $399 this summer, and the first run of a few dozen systems sold out within a week, said Cora Stryker, its co-founder.
The Flex 200 maxes out at about a quarter of the electricity that balcony systems in Germany can produce. That’s by design: The founders wanted to release a product that could be used anywhere in the United States without needing permission from the authorities.
Bright Saver’s product is not designed to send electricity back to the grid, and it is not large enough to trigger local utility rules, said Kevin Chou, the group’s executive director.
“I think that what we’re trying to do is demonstrate the demand,” said Stryker, who added that the organization was working with state lawmakers to allow more powerful plug-in solar systems.
“Hopefully, a year or two from now, we won’t be talking about these 200-watt systems,” she said.
Utah Moves First
Utah legislators eliminated one of their state’s biggest hurdles for plug-in solar this year when they passed a law exempting certain home solar systems from requirements that they enter into interconnection agreements with local utilities to send small amounts of electricity back to the grid.
Some larger plug-in systems are already being sold in the state. EcoFlow, which has a presence in Germany, began selling its STREAM systems to Utah residents last month. Including panels, they retail for about $2,000. The company declined to share specific sales figures, but Ryan Oliver, its spokesperson, said interest has been “high” since state lawmakers passed the bill.
“We saw that as an invite to bring our product to the Utah market, and we’re hoping to see some of these same kinds of moves in other states,” Oliver said.
But Raymond Ward, the Republican state legislator who introduced the plug-in solar bill, still hasn’t added panels to his own home. That’s because his own bill says plug-in systems must be certified by a nationally-recognized safety testing agency. Right now, Ward said, companies selling panels are operating in “a little bit of a gray area.”
The Missing Piece
The “gray area” Ward referenced has to do with a safety standard from the independent testing company Underwriters Laboratories. “UL certification” appears on household items like hair dryers, light bulbs and refrigerators.
Underwriters Laboratories has not issued a specific safety standard for plug-in solar systems. Individual solar components like inverters are already certified under an existing standard.
Some safety advocates argue that a whole-product standard, not just one that applies to its components, is necessary before plug-in solar systems hit the market.
Ward said he thought people outside Utah might start buying and installing plug-in solar systems once the UL standard was published, regardless of state regulations. “That’s just a guess, but that’s what happened in Europe,” he said.
He said that he wanted to give his wife a plug-in system for Christmas, and that he hoped the products would be out of the gray area by then.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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