Is Plug-In Solar LEGAL in the UK? (Top 5 Questions Answered)

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Well, good morning and welcome back to the channel. Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Um, trying to keep up with all of the comments on all of the videos about plug-in solar. So, today I thought I'd take a seat, we'd calm down, and we try and answer your top five questions.

[00:00:23]Starting with the number one question.

[00:00:26]Is it legal?

[00:00:37]Okay, before we go any further, let me be very clear here. I am not a lawyer.

[00:00:43]I'm not an electrician. I am not an expert on policy, on the wiring regulations or anything like that.

[00:00:53]All I can tell you is what I've been able to dig up by reading and researching into this whole topic. And let me be very clear, it is not clearcut and dried. So I found a really great website which I will pop up a link on the screen. I'll also put a link in the description below. It is called ukpluginsolar.co.uk UK and they have a really great page on the regulations.

[00:01:22]And to answer the question that I just posed of is it legal, their quick answer is yes. Plug-in solar is legal in the UK since the 24th of March 2026. The wiring regulations BS7671 amendment 4 are now live. The BSI, that's the British Standards Institute product standard for certified kits for DIY solar connection is expected in summer 2026.

[00:01:49]Until then, the fully compliant route is to use a qualified electrician.

[00:01:56]Now, I've said this for the last two years since we've had plug-in solar systems in our house is the best way to do this is to get an electrician to wire it into a fused spur. And that way, you don't have to worry about people accidentally unplugging it or not being compliant because you're not using the right kind of wiring or the right plug sockets or if you've got the right RCBOs in your consumer unit. If you get an electrician in, they will take care of all of that for you. But this uh this website is, you know, is is very good.

[00:02:29]It lays it out in simple terms. People can understand, you know, it sort of walks you through a timeline again, which I'll I'll pop up on the screen so that you can see it there. Now, again, it depends on your level of risk. And I'm sure there'll be people in the comments saying, but but your house insurance might be invalid. That's why I say go get a qualified electrician to do it. It won't cost you a lot of money and you'll have the peace of mind that you're not going to get into any trouble. But the question is, is it legal? There is no legislation in the UK that forbids this. Therefore, a policeman is not going to come and knock on your door and arrest you for doing plug-in solar.

[00:03:07]Question number two, how much is it going to save me? Now, unfortunately, that is an impossible question for me to answer. The reason is is everybody's different. you use a completely different amount of electricity and at different times of the day to I do. But all I can give you is my data. So what I've been doing is over the last two years for one of the systems and about two and a half to three years for one of the other systems is I've been publishing that data on my website alongside what does my rooftop system generate. So in to be completely transparent so I'm not hiding anything.

[00:03:45]This is a completely automated system.

[00:03:47]Every single night, um, I have scripts that log into all the devices, they pull all the usage data, they munch it all together, and they publish it on the website with no human intervention. So, if you'd like to see that, you can head over to my website to jonathan.com. If you head up to the menus at the top to data visualization, again, links will be in the description below, and you go to the solar generation tab, it will load in data going back to, in this case, 2023.

[00:04:14]Now what you can see is a basic dashboard that shows um all the different arrays. So in our solar edge system we have three different arrays.

[00:04:21]We have the front of the house, we have the rear of the house and we have the garage roof. And then underneath that you'll see two systems. These are the ones in purple. These are the plug-in systems. There is fence pream that is the fence mounted system that consists of one panel over here and one of the panels behind me. They go into an EcoFlow power stream. Now, the Power Stream is an older plug-in system and they don't actually make it anymore. Um, a lot of people really like them, me included. Uh, but then they're not something you can just easily go and buy. You can get one on eBay if if you really like them. But the modern version is the stream micro inverter. And then the second system you can see there, the fence stream. Apologies for naming my fault. Um, that consists of two panels on this side of the garden and two further panels on that side of the garden. And that is so that we get morning sun here if the sun ever breaks through the clouds and we get evening sun over there. And again, helps feed power into the house. So again, we can scroll down here. Now, what you'll see is a bunch of graphs. And if you're just interested in the um the plug-in systems, you can turn off certain data sets. So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to tap front, rear, and garage. And that turns off the solar age system completely from the data set. And you can see now we have the two systems.

[00:05:38]We have the power stream which we've had a bit longer. We've had since 2024.

[00:05:41]We've had the stream ultra system which we've had for about 9 10 months now. So again, I'm just going to turn off the power stream so we can see the data just from the stream ultra. So this is consists of a stream ultra, an AC pro and an AC. So 6 kW hours of batteries um currently sitting in there with four 440 W panels connected to them. So you can see immediately there we've uh we've generated in just in the space of almost a year 461 kwatt hours. It's saved us about 130. Now I certainly wouldn't recommend you jump in with 6 kW hours of batteries cuz that's going to take your payback period out into the sort of six or sevenyear period but we can tap on any one of the bars. We can go into um into 2026 here. Um ignore the the green line for the moment. So we can actually see the different data sets. Whoops, there we go. And you can see obviously in January it it did almost nothing. Um the odd day we might have peaked above about half a kilowatt hour, but they're not optimally aligned panels. Therefore, they don't deliver a huge amount of energy. Um as we go through into March, sorry, in February, into March, into April. Um in April, you can start to see we're up in the 5 kWh range. And again, as we head into May, it's been a on and off May. Some days we've had really good days where we've had 5 kilowatt hours.

[00:07:05]Some days we've had pretty poor days and we've had the lowest we've had it's just under 1 kilowatt hour. But the nice thing is if we if we scroll down to the bottom here, you can see the stream system on the right hand side there, that 11.7% number. So what this is saying is so far we have saved £245 by having this system. And we've had this system for just less than just less than a year. So if I go back to the multi-year, you can see there, if I go to July, we installed it at the back end of July. So we're coming up on one year of ownership, but it has saved us about £245 so far. Probably going to reach somewhere around about £300 to £330 by the oneear mark. Um there is still uh £2,000 worth of equipment to pay off there. So about £1,855 still to pay. And that means we've paid off about 11% of that. So, is it generating earthshattering amounts of energy? Is it going to wipe out my bills? Absolutely not. Is it making a significant contribution to my my home?

[00:08:07]Absolutely. So, if I turn back on all of those arrays there, you can see at the top there, you know, it it's adding five to 10% maybe depending on the month that you look at.

[00:08:22]If we look at May, you can see they're probably adding 5% between the two plug-in systems. So, again, not going to wipe your bills out, but will make a meaningful contribution.

[00:08:34]Okay, question number three. How have you got your panels mounted? Well, these are all every single panel in here has a different mounting system on them because I generally buy different mounting systems as I go along. I try different ones out. And the best one I've come up with for hanging panels on a fence is a simple hook. The panels behind me have a hook that just goes through uh two slots on the back of the panel. They just bolted on and then they hook over the top of the fence. And you can you can see from these panels here, they run the full length of the fence.

[00:09:07]They they are literally hanging one centimeter off of the ground. And they're fine. They they have they no requirements to have any other fixing.

[00:09:17]and the wind doesn't get behind them.

[00:09:19]And short of a 50year storm blowing through, which I probably would take the panels down and saw them in the garage if that was coming. Um, there's been no issues with the wind getting underneath them and lifting the panels up. Now, once a year I do take them down and make sure that there's no issues. It's not damaging the fence. The fence isn't rotting away behind them, but they just sit there and they generate energy all day long.

[00:09:43]Now, the next question that came up a lot was about the choice of micro inverter. So, in the test that I ran, I used the Hoy Miles. This is the And I got to look at the back because the the names just roll off the tongue. It is the HMS 800W-2T.

[00:09:58]Um, this is the uh micro inverter that I used. And a lot of people asked why this particular micro inverter over the EcoFlow Stream micro inverter. And the honest answer, this was available. I was able to go onto Amazon, order this, and it was here two days later. Um, I will put links in my uh my Amazon storefront page if anyone who's looking for a micro inverter and you want to help out the channel, there will be affiliate links in in the description for this video.

[00:10:23]But this is a really high quality micro inverter. Um, no issues with it. Um, you can actually see in there all the the sort of dirt for where it rained, where it was lying on the floor. Um, it functioned absolutely perfectly for the whole point of the trial. Um, I have no issues with the micro inverter whatsoever. Really, really good bit of kit. Why this over the EcoFlow? Like I say, I couldn't get the EcoFlow to do the trial. So, um, I chose this and very, very happy with it. Now, there are a couple of things to bear in mind is the HOAs make multiple versions of micro inverters. Some of them support direct Wi-Fi access. Some of them require something called a DTU. Um, this particular one doesn't require the DTU.

[00:11:04]So, if you get the the uh 800W2T, this connects over Wi-Fi. So, you can connect this directly to the S Miles Home app that they they make available for it. Now, as I say, the micro inverter itself really great. The app not so good. And this is where I think the EcoFlow, even though I haven't had a chance to test the actual micro inverter itself, the EcoFlow app itself is was much superior to the uh the Hoy Miles app. So quite often when I logged into this uh into the Hoy app I was getting an error saying could not connect to server and this happened I would say on average once or twice a day over the sort of 10 to 12 days that I ran the trial. So um I think they have still have some work to do on their app the reliability of the software but from a hardware perspective this thing was absolutely solid. Now one other difference is uh when you order this you will get and I haven't actually got the tool to undo this. You will only get this piece and the inverter. You will need to purchase this plugin separately.

[00:12:07]It's about £7. Again, link in in in the description below. And then source your own piece of cable. Now, this actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it because I needed a couple of meters of cable with a plug on the end of it.

[00:12:19]But what if you need 20 m of cable?

[00:12:22]Makes no sense for them to just put an arbitrary length of cable in the box and hope that that works out for you. So, I think a really sensible way. It would have been nice if the seven pound connector came in the box with it given you can't use it without it. It is a proprietary connector. Um, but yeah, I understand why they want you to source your own cable because everybody's needs are different. And the final one for today is, am I back in the good books with the CFO? Now, the patio furniture is back where it should be. Um, I would like to say I'm getting there, but I think I'm always getting there. Um, I got to say a big shout out to my wife.

[00:12:57]She puts up with an awful lot of crazy experiments that go on in our garden where I'm consistently trashing the place, moving stuff around. So, uh, a huge thank you to her for, uh, for putting up with me. That's it for this really short video. I need to get back inside because I think it's about to start raining. But if I'm lucky, I'll see you back here real soon for another video. Take care. Bye-bye.