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  • I think the move to allow plug in solar is good, but its just a sticking plaster over the issue. And that is rental houses not having solar, or much of anything.

    In the 60s many houses only got indoor toilets because the government forced the issue. Maybe we should be doing the same for insulation, energy efficiency and solar panels.

    This goes double for social housing. Poor people can't borrow money as cheaply as the government, so we're left giving money to people to pay their electricity bill. Why not put solar power on their rooves instead. This can be counterbalanced if needed by taking money from the benefits, so it pays for itself.

    by benj111
  • We already have several plug-in batteries?

    Simple search: https://www.ecohome.net/en/guides/4189/best-plug-and-play-ho...

    by ghusto
  • We've had these for years? My brother has two solar panels on his balcony and plugged into a normal socket.
    by apexalpha
  • I assume plug-in batteries are considerably more workable in the UK on 240V, since they could charge and deploy at double the rate of a plug-in system here. Of course 240V plugs exist in North America, but they're generally only installed for dryers, ranges, and EV chargers, so people don't tend to have one just free.
    by tempestn
  • Plugs and sockets have the wrong gender for this. On the battery, you'd have a male plug with live 240v contacts, ready to short against anything, or anyone, that's conductive. This is the same reason why male-to-male extension cords are labeled "suicide cords".
    by satiric
  • There are several variations on this idea, and the web sites are confusing.

    First, there are ones that are just a big UPS. You plug them into the wall, and plug loads into them. They may try to level your power usage. No problem with that. Good for refrigerators. That seems to be what "Pila" is selling. This class of device seems to come with deceptive ads which do not show cords from loads plugged into the box.

    Then there are ones that purport to pump power back into their wall outlet. That has safety issues, starting with its male power plug being an output. It can't provide power when there's no input power, because it would try to drive the the whole grid during an outage. It's mostly for taking advantage of variable power pricing. This seems to be what "Regen" is selling.

    These are apparently available in Germany, but must be installed on their own dedicated circuit, so you don't have a load and a source on the same side of the breaker. Otherwise, you could potentially have an overload without a breaker trip. Regen is trying to get them into the UK, but old UK ring main wiring is a bad match to this. Gotta have a breaker between load and source.

    The trouble with these things is that, plugged into the wrong outlet, they create a gap in overload protection that won't show up until something goes wrong.

    by Animats
  • Why bother? Power companies will complain they are losing money and regulators will allow them to buy energy from residential solar panels basically for free (NEM 3.0). This is California.

    California has spent decades convincing people to convert to solar panels and EVs and now that many have switched, they doubled electricity prices and told us not to charge when it’s too hot. Now they want solar panel owners to pay a surcharge for “connecting to the grid”, upwards of $100/month or more than my actual solar bill. It’s all a scam.

    by reenorap
  • Bluetti already has a product for this available in the EU. I have been posting eveywhere that they need to bring it to the US.

    https://www.bluettipower.eu/products/balco-transfer-hub

    Balcony solar without storage is actually pretty dumb when we already have integrated battery/inverter/solar mppt units available for a few hundred dollars.

    All we need to do is have something like this hub inbetween to ensure grid isolation when an outage occurs.

    For crticial loads you would just plug those directly into the all in one battery unit. Almost all of them these day also have a <20ms UPS pass through function as well. When the grid goes down it can isolate the battery from backfeeding the house but the solar will still function and the critical loads will still function.

    With a solution like Pila is developing you could even use your homes wiring to transfer power (~1kW) around multiple small battery units (attached to independent circuits) each with some different critical loads and solar attached to them.

    by chris222

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