I checked the state of this locally. Turns out we have utility monopoly, and it's basically illegal...
For now.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Articles like this are what make me hate where we are as a society right now.
Are utilities trying to delay them or is the industry that makes these panels paying "news" sources to write articles to help ram the products through and bypass the standard approval process that makes sure they are safe? Maybe a bit of both.
Was this written by a human or an LLM? Is my distrust of everything I read a side effect of the corruption rampant in our system or is it the goal? Maybe a bit of both.
Edit: I see they are part of the NPR network, so maybe more believable and less likely to be slop.
Consider the source.
We've basically always had to do this for decades, and kinda didn't. The internet marched on without caring about source credibility too much. It's just that the downsides are now very apparent.
Always had to consider the source? Sure.
The problem is that, unlike in those decades before, there are little to no consequences for corruption. Each year has also seen a further abandoning of long term considerations in favor of maximizing profits for the next quarter. We also have things like vulture capitalism, where legal financial situations that don't really make sense can still be extremely profitable as long as they are comfortable destroying an entire company and all of its workers...and they are. It just feels different these days.
Also, unlike in those decades before, the time it takes to produce content was along the same order of magnitude as time it takes to consume it. Today. A website with an entire "body of work" can be fabricated overnigh... or a legitimate source can have its entire staff of writers fired and replaced overnight with an LLM trained on their body of work, producing content with a convincing likeness, at least on the surface.
I just feel like there are so many bad actors and people acting in bad faith now...and they have to spend very little effort to do it and are unlikely to face consequences if they succeed.
Yea, the cognitive load required to evaluate and engage both on the article, as well as politically is so high that ignorance and a shrug seems normal.
I am not sure that a commune in the boonies is the answer, but it certainly seems more appealing then the total system collapse we seem to be apart of lately.
German utilities expressed many of the same concerns nearly a decade ago when plug-in solar started to become popular in Germany. But with more than a million systems installed, no safety incidents have been reported for customers who used the panels as instructed, according to a research paper funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
So basically, two responses:
- So it's no fucking problem then.
- Okay, okay, we're talking Americans....... it'll be a problem, then. :)
We should also use public banking to allow apartment complexes (regardless of ownership)'where the majority want regular solar to have it installed and paid back as a cut of the solar savings.
Easy-to-use solar panels aren't coming... they are here now.
Stop fucking pretending this is some Star Wars future that requires a degree in quantum physics. Be the solution.
This is genuinely so fucking cool. I had never even considered that you could just plug a solar panel into a regular outlet and it wouldn't like, somehow completely wreck your electrical system or something.
As someone who probably won't own my home soon, if ever, if I end up living in an apartment where I owe money for the electricity I use rather than it being an inclusive bundle with the rent, it could be genuinely really cool to just have a solar panel or two I can hang off a balcony, offset some of my electricity cost, but still be able to take it with me whenever I inevitably have to move out because the landlord decides he's gonna try to squeeze me for more rent.
It's not "just" a solar panel, to be legally compliant in Germany. The part you plug in is basically a control unit. They aren't super big and complex, but they need to be able to do 2 things:
-
Detect if there's a live circuit, and not transmit any power if not. This is because sometimes electricity is turned off for maintenance. You don't want an electrician dying because a line they turned off is actually live due to someone having this plugged in.
-
Power limiter, similar in function to a circuit breaker. This prevents overcurrents happening in your walls and starting a fire. Because all of this is happening after a house's breaker box, they won't flip if the combined grid + solar current is too high, so the solar unit's control unit has to be able to deal with it.
Disclaimer: I'm a layman, not an electrician. Just read into the tech because it's interesting to me.
- Detect and provide that AC power in phase with the grid power
Thanks for the info, these were exactly the questions I had!
Indeed this is how most people in Germany are using them. As long as it is a relatively small system and the house has semi-modern cabling it isn't a big deal at all and works fine.
Plugging a power producer into an outlet does sound like a fast way to light your house on fire.
Or, if you touch the death prongs, death.
But maybe it would work. I'd not trust it, especially not in older houses.
@chaogomu @AmbitiousProcess That's quite usual for example in Germany now & there are good regulations for these products. They only work when there is grid power coming from the outlet as well, and they are limited in output power, to avoid both the fire and shock hazards.
You can buy the kit for $2,500. Using my rates and usage, it's still not worth it.
Monthly savings
$21.25
89 kWh offset
New est. bill $90.01 down from $111.26
Annual savings $255 per year
9.8 yrs to break even
What size of unit did you calculate with? Typically the ones sold in Europe are below 1000€, some even as cheap as 600€.
It's all on their website:
It seems to include a battery, which would not be necessary if you just want to save money rather than it being useful in a blackout (although their website says you can't using in a blackout). Removing the battery element would decrease the cost a lot.
In the US, not necessarily. Connecting power generators to the grid without a permit from an electriction is technically illegal. Most utilities will charge you or even get you in trouble if it's reported to them, or you send power back through the meter, hence the standard approach is to dump the power into batteries and just run devices off that.
And even in places like Utah (which just legalized this), the battery-less panels are still expensive.
I don't know why. Maybe scaling+competition hasn't kicked in to bring prices down? It could also be that 120V inverters are less common and more expensive?
You can probably order one for half the price 🤷
@FaygoRedPop That sounds about the same break-even rate I calculated for my rooftop solar.
And for someone renting it's that or nothing, so 10 years to break even vs never breaking even seems like a decent deal