Plug-in solar panels UK: are they legal, what do they cost, are they worth it?

The law changed on 27 August 2026. Here is what you can actually buy, plug in and save.

We track home energy kit for a living — air conditioners, heat pumps, dehumidifiers — and plug-in solar is the first genuinely new category the UK has legalised in years. This guide is the honest version: the law as written, the eight kits you can legally plug in today, the arithmetic behind the savings claim, and the cases where it does not add up. For the live price ledger and register tracker, we use 800wsolar.co.uk — the UK’s plug-in solar price ledger.

Yes, in Great Britain, since 27 August 2026. The instrument is the Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 and Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002 (Amendment) Regulations 2026, made on 16 July 2026, laid before Parliament on 17 July and in force from 27 August. Before that date, plugging any generator into a domestic socket breached the plug safety regime — which is why the UK sat out a technology that Germany has had for years.

The instrument does not legalise plug-in solar in general. It legalises a specific device that meets an interim product specification. Miss any one of these five conditions and the kit is still unlawful to plug in:

Two other limits catch people out. Only one kit per household is permitted — you cannot fit two 800W kits to make 1,600W. And the instrument applies to England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland has a separate regime and is not covered.

One or two solar panels connect to a small micro-inverter, which converts their DC output to 240V AC and pushes it out through a normal plug into a wall socket. The electricity flows to whatever in your home is drawing power at that moment — the fridge, the router, the standby load, the kettle. Your meter sees less demand, so you buy less.

There is no switching, no consumer unit work, no electrician and no MCS installer. That is the whole appeal. It is also the whole limitation:

• You only save on what you use as it is generated. There is no battery and no export payment, so generation that exceeds your household demand at that instant is given to the grid for nothing.
• The 800W cap is on the inverter, not the panels. A 1,260W array is legal because the inverter still limits AC output to 800W. Over-sizing the panels wins you more generation in dim conditions, at the cost of clipping the brightest hours.
• Orientation dominates everything. A south-facing balcony rail at a sensible tilt will out-generate an east-facing wall by 30% or more. A shaded kit is a bad kit at any price.

Every kit below is listed as compliant on the ENA G98 register as of 29 August 2026. Prices track the 800wsolar plug-in solar price ledger. Kits marked POA are certified but not yet widely stocked at a published price.

Register references and prices per the ENA G98 Type Test Register and the 800wsolar ledger, checked 29 August 2026. Argos lists five of these kits; Currys, B&Q, Screwfix, Wickes and Amazon were all named by the government as launch retailers. Check current stock and price before you buy — this category is three days old.

The spread in price per watt is the real story. The 1,260W kit is £0.78 a watt; the 460W ground kit is £1.52 — you are paying twice as much per watt for the privilege of buying small, because the mounting hardware, inverter and cabling cost roughly the same either way. If you have the space, buying bigger is close to free money.

The government’s figure is up to £110 a year, which it describes as roughly 20% of an average home’s electricity use. That is the top of the range, not the middle. Here is our own model, stated in full so you can argue with it:

Estimates, not quotes. Change any one of the four assumptions and the payback moves by a year or more. If you are out at work every weekday, your self-consumption will be lower than 55% and payback longer.

Two findings worth pulling out. First, the 1,030W and 1,260W kits pay back at the same rate — around 8.8 years — because the 800W inverter throws away the extra generation the bigger array produces at midday. Buy the 1,260W for the larger annual saving, not for a faster payback. Second, the entry-level 515W kit at £599 looks cheap and is not: it takes 11.7 years to break even, three years longer than a kit costing £300 more.

Set against a 25-year panel warranty, a nine-year payback still leaves 16 years of free generation. That is a real return — just not a fast one. If you want the same money to work harder on your bills, insulation and a heat pump running-cost check will usually beat it.

Notification is mandatory, free, and takes about twenty minutes. It is a notification, not an application — for a compliant kit your Distribution Network Operator cannot refuse it. Skipping it is the single most common way to end up with an unlawful installation.

1. 01 Buy a kit that is certified on the ENA G98 register

   Check the ENA G98 Type Test Register for the micro-inverter in the kit and confirm it shows as compliant, not merely listed. As of 29 August 2026 that means UKSOL or Perlight. Write down the manufacturer reference — you need it on the form.

2. 02 Find your Distribution Network Operator

   Your DNO is the company that owns the wires into your street, not your energy supplier. Enter your postcode at energynetworks.org to identify it. Most DNOs take G98 notifications through an online portal.

3. 03 Complete the G98 notification form

   You need your address and MPAN, the manufacturer and model of the micro-inverter, its register reference, the registered capacity in kW, the number of phases (one for a domestic socket) and the commissioning date. There is no fee.

4. 04 Install the kit and plug it in

   Mount the panels on a balcony rail, wall bracket or ground frame per the manufacturer's instructions, connect the panels to the micro-inverter, then plug the moulded BS 1363 plug into a dedicated wall socket. Do not use an extension lead or a multi-way adaptor.

5. 05 Send the notification within 28 days

   G98 allows notification either before connection or within 28 days of commissioning. Submit it, keep the confirmation, and tell your home insurer that you have fitted a plug-in microgenerator.

This is the group the change was aimed at. Around a fifth of UK households rent privately and almost none of them can install rooftop solar — you cannot bolt a 4kWp array to someone else’s roof. A plug-in kit clamps to a balcony rail or stands on a ground frame, comes off in an afternoon and moves house with you.

Renting and trying to keep a flat cool as well? Our air conditioning for rented flats guide covers the same permission problem from the cooling side.

These are marketed at UK buyers and appear on the ENA register, but with testing unfinished. None of them is certified for socket connection in Great Britain today. We list them so you recognise them, not so you buy them.