This conversation aired in the March 26, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Rising energy prices are a huge concern for many Bay Area residents right now. Using rooftop solar power is one way to cut energy bills way down, but that’s out of reach for renters and for many other Bay Area residents. Now, there’s a new type of small-scale technology called plug-in solar. It’s affordable, and available to renters. There’s just one little problem: It’s not exactly legal in California. At least not yet.
Crosscurrents host Hana Baba sat down with KALW's climate reporter, Mary Catherine O’Connor, to learn more.
Click the button above to listen.
QA Transcript:
HANA BABA: Hey, Mary Catherine.
REPORTER: Hey, Hana.
HANA BABA: All right, so what is plug-in solar and how does it work?
REPORTER: These are flat black panels. They're roughly the size of a small kitchen table. They weigh around 40 pounds and you can even mount them on your balcony with zip ties, and some people call them balcony solar. They turn sunlight into electricity, which is fed straight into your home's wiring just through the plug. And a single panel can generate a few hundred watts, which is enough to power a fridge, give or take, but you could add more panels and power more things.
HANA BABA: Okay. Alright. So how expensive is plug-in solar?
REPORTER: So the panels start at about $500 or $600, and in energy savings you could earn that back in three or four years. There's some caveats about how much power you need, et cetera.
HANA BABA: $600 per panel?
REPORTER: Per panel. If this takes off, the cost will probably fall. If you compare that to a rooftop system, you're talking tens of thousands of dollars. So the upside with a rooftop system is that you can sell extra energy you make that you don't need back to the grid plug-in solar is not designed to do that. But in recent years, there's been all these changes to policies that have made rooftop solar way harder to afford and with a much longer payback period. So that's kind of the give and take.
HANA BABA: Okay. So who is the target consumer for these plug-in panels then?
REPORTER: Renters. Big time. And the pitch there is that you buy a panel, you plug it in at your home, you save on your power bill, and then if you move, you can take it with you and keep using it. It also appeals to homeowners for the same reasons, but if your home is really big, it might not be quite enough.
HANA BABA: Okay. So this sounds great. Energy bills have been creeping up. So can I just go out and get a plug-in Solar panel today?
REPORTER: Well, I mean you could order one, but whether it's legal is a bit of a gray area,
And that's because utilities say that users really need what's called an interconnection agreement to use plug-in solar. That's a kind of contract that was really designed for rooftop systems. It helps them connect to the grid. So without one, if I bought a plug-in panel today and I plugged it in at my house, PG&E could say I'm violating their terms of service. In theory, they could cut my power off, but I heard from a plug-in solar advocate, he said that requiring an interconnection agreement for plug-in is like requiring a driver's license to ride a bike. It's just over the top. Plus these agreements can be expensive and they can take a long time to set up. And so those factors, and the fact that you probably need a landlord to buy in on this would probably make it a non-starter for renters.
HANA BABA: So this contract issue…is that the main hurdle?
REPORTER: It's not. Because these devices send electrons out into your home's wiring. There are utility firefighter and electrician groups who have raised safety concerns. They're worried that these devices could start a fire perhaps, or shock a user or a utility worker. So I interviewed Rupert Mayer. He co-founded Bright Saver, which is a nonprofit that advocates for Plug and Solar and is a vendor. He showed me plug-in panels that he's installed at his Berkeley home.
HANA BABA: Wait, how does he have them in his Berkeley home already?
REPORTER: Well, it's because he already has rooftop solar. So he already has this interconnection agreement with the utility that you would need for plug-in.
HANA BABA: He has the agreement. Okay.
REPORTER: And so he said that plug-in panels have integrated safety features. This is what he told me.
RUPERT MAYER: So this is an inherent safety mechanism of all plug-in solar, primarily to protect you from electrocuting yourself when you pull out the plug. So as soon as I pull it out, it loses the grid signal and it shuts down faster than I can touch it. And the same is true if the grit goes down, it shuts down faster than a lineman can get up on that pole.
HANA BABA: So did Rupert touch the plug after he pulled it out of the socket to prove his point?
REPORTER: He did. I asked him to. And the panels were in full sun, by the way. They were cranking out electrons. He touched the plug after he unplugged it and he did not light up like a Christmas tree.
HANA BABA: Okay. All right. Thankfully. But so who's already using plug-in solar then?
REPORTER: Well, it's really old news actually in Europe, especially in Germany. In fact, the German Solar Association says there's 4 million German households with plug-in solar, and they've proven to be very safe. Now, these panels are also really cheap over there. You can actually just go to IKEA and buy some panels. And so that's the vision that advocates have for plug-in solar here in the US.
HANA BABA: Okay. All interesting. So what does the future hold for plug-in solar in the country and in California?
REPORTER: I'll start in California first. In December, Senator Scott Weiner introduced a bill, called the Plugging into the Sun Act, that would make plug and solar legal without that interconnection agreement — that contract I mentioned earlier. All told, there's 30 such bills across the country right now. Some of them are not in great shape. They're probably going to fail if they haven't failed already. But Virginia looks like it's going to pass. And all of these bills, they took inspiration from the one US state that has passed a plug and solar law, and that's Utah. I talked to one of Rupert's co-founders, Cora Stryker, and here's what she told me about that.
CORA STRYKER: One of the things that's really exciting about this movement is it's not a Democrat movement, it's not a Republican movement. It passed in Utah — deep red, Utah — first.
REPORTER: And I will just add that energy affordability definitely has bipartisan support, but utilities can be a pretty formidable opponent.
HANA BABA: So what's the status of Senator Wiener's bill?
REPORTER: So right now it's progressing. It passed out of its original committee. Senator Wiener agreed to make some safety standard upgrades to the bill, but PG&E is still pushing for the bill to require users to have that interconnection agreement, and that could prove to be a pretty big hurdle to passage. I'll say one final thing, which is that if the bill does pass, Cora told me that renters might then need another statewide policy to protect their rights as tenants to use plug and solar so that landlords couldn't stand in their way.
