As someone who writes about renovating and home energy on a daily basis, I have a wish list as long as my arm of energy efficient and bill-reducing upgrades I want to make to my home. But given my available budget, many of these upgrades are going to be on the wish list for a while.
So imagine my excitement when I realised plug-in solar panels, an affordable alternative to rooftop panels, were now legal in the UK. Available to buy at places like Amazon, Argos and Octopus from around the £460 mark, these panels are designed to be installed on a DIY basis, and simply plugged into a household socket.
While they can’t generate as much solar power as traditional solar panels, the Government states that plug-in solar panels can help reduce energy bills by around £110 per year, with panels providing up to 20% of average home electricity use. That sounded like a good start on my wish list to me!
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Despite covering various aspects of plug-in solar panels as part of my role here at Ideal Home, including how you assess their suitability, I was convinced that my home would be an ideal candidate. My house is late 1970s and has a sunny garden, outdoor plug sockets. Result.
However, it’s always advisable to get a qualified electrician to check your electrics and make sure they are compatible with plug-in solar panels. While I was waiting for my local electrician to come back to me, I did some more research and found a quick check that I could do myself.
Electrical Safety First had released some guidance on plug-in solar panels, in which it advised: ‘Given unresolved concerns about the potential impact of plug-in solar panels on certain RCDs, we recommend households have at least a Type A bidirectional RCD protecting circuits intended for use with plug-in solar panels.
‘Until these concerns are addressed, homes with Type AC RCDs should not use plug-in solar systems without first upgrading to a minimum Type A bidirectional RCD on those circuits.’
And I’ll be honest, as I’m not an electrician, some of that terminology went right over my head. But the key part that stood out for me was ‘bidirectional’. Plug-in solar panels send electricity into your sockets, so that said to me that if my set up was not bidirectional, then that would be a problem.
So I went to my circuit board to see if there was anything obvious on there that would suggest it was a bidirectional set up (by, you know, saying ‘this is a bidirectional set up’). Sadly, there was no such luck. However, I did spot that on my circuit board, the RCD (Residual Current Device) switch and the smaller MCBs (Miniature Circuit Breakers) all had a brand name and/or codes on them. After snapping a photo of them while I waited for the electrician, I thought I’d give them a Google and see if they were bidirectional-current friendly.
And my optimism quickly faded. There in black and white was the word ‘unidirectional’. And the advice to resolve the issue? Upgrade the circuit board, at a cost of around £900-1,200. All of a sudden, my budget-friendly plans were considerably less friendly.
Newer properties may have bidirectional circuit boards already, and if your Google checks suggest that’s the case, I would still advise you to get an electrician to confirm.
Now, I don’t share this to put anyone off getting plug-in solar panels, quite the opposite, in fact. I am really passionate about energy saving measures being more accessible to more people, especially those who rent, live in flats or are on a tight budget.
Shop plug-in solar panels:
UKSOL
515w Pro Compact Plug in Solar Panel With Hybrid Mount Bundle
Modular Solar
Plug-In Modular Solar Unit
PowerXpress
800W Bifacial Plug-In Solar Power Kit
Instead I share this to encourage anyone considering this kind of tech to be more to be aware of just how necessary the electrical checks are before you commit to buying the panels. Plugging solar panels into a unidirectional circuit can cause damage and pose a potential fire hazard, and if you haven’t followed the advice on getting your wiring checked by a qualified electrician, then you run the risk of voiding your home insurance policy.
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