Solar Panels That Plug Into Your Wall Are About to Be Everywhere

On a quiet street in suburban South Salt Lake City, Utah, the stirring of an energy revolution is taking shape. There, outside the spare bedroom of an unassuming, thousand-square-foot midcentury home sit three angled solar panels plugged into a nearby outlet.

Unlike the highly technical and expensive hurdles required to install a large rooftop solar system, the setup on Andrew Leon and Victoria Mauro’s lawn is small, portable, and cheap. The unit generates enough electricity to run laptops, lights, and some appliances, including the refrigerator.

Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar because apartment dwellers can use it, is spreading quickly across the U.S. California is the latest state to pass a law reducing the red tape that has previously stymied consumers looking to generate some electricity from a small number of solar panels.

Utah was the first state to legalize balcony solar in the spring of 2025, and nine states subsequently passed similar legislation— Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Virginia, and now, California. New York lawmakers approved a bill that is awaiting the governor’s signature, while nearly two dozen other state legislators have introduced them.

Plug-in solar systems, typically comprised of one to three panels to stay below the maximum wattages allowed by the laws, enable users to save money on their power bills and to reduce the energy they use from power plants that generate electricity by burning fossil fuels. “The appeal of being able to make your own electricity, and for less money than you can buy it from a utility, that’s universal for Americans,” says Joshua Pearce, an electrical engineer at Western University in Ontario, Canada, who advanced the merits of plug-in solar a decade ago.

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For most homes, electricity is generated in faraway power plants and transmitted through power lines. Homes where rooftop solar creates electricity wire the energy into the home through the circuit breaker panel, and excess electricity flows back to the utility. But power from plug-in systems stays in the home. With a small metal box called an inverter attached to the panels and plugged into the outlet, electrical currents are pushed to other outlets throughout the residence. Systems typically contribute 10 to 30 percent of an average home’s use, says Jennifer Eden, who works on renewable energy programs for the policy nonprofit Utah Clean Energy.

The set-ups have become especially popular in Europe. Swedish furniture chain IKEA sells plug-in solar kits in Germany, a country where more than a million units have been installed in the past few years.

As more U.S. states approve the technology and as more products become available, “this is going to take off like hotcakes,” Pearce predicts. With widespread adoption, residents could save an estimated $13 billion a year in electricity costs, he calculated in a 2017 journal article, a figure he says is higher now that electric rates have soared. People are especially pleased “there’s now an entry point into solar that doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars and can be used by people who don’t own their home,” Eden says.

In states with especially high utility rates, residents reap substantial savings. Nick Danz, who lives alone in a modern, two-bedroom luxury apartment in Fort Collins, Colorado, became eager for plug-in solar after reading about its popularity in Germany. Colorado has more than 200 sunny days a year and Danz’s apartment faces southwest, an optimal direction for sun collection. (Directly south is the most ideal.)

When, this summer, his state passed a law for plug-in systems, he reached out to the California-based clean-energy nonprofit Bright Saver. To encourage people to adopt renewable energy, Bright Saver sells plug-in systems without markups. Danz paid under $300 for a one-panel unit and affixed it with metal clips over his small, third-floor balcony.

The system tripped his apartment’s circuit breaker and shut off his computer several times, but a different inverter solved the problem. Danz estimates he has already saved more than $300 on his power bills since August. For the four days a week Danz is away from home working as a train conductor, “the solar panel is essentially running all of my standby items,” he says. He plans to soon move to an apartment with a larger balcony, where he hopes to hang three panels, the most his state’s law allows.

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Some utilities have expressed concern that plug-in units could send power back to the grid and electrocute employees working on the lines. But Pearce found that no microinverters sold in the U.S. are capable of this. Earlier this year the testing company UL Solutions set safety standards for plug-in solar systems and has already certified one manufacturer.

Pearce has also heard concerns that the energy being pumped into wall sockets could cause wiring in old homes to catch fire, but he says “that’s never happened in Europe,” despite its widespread adoption. In June the British government tested several products available in that country and found no direct electrical hazard, although some exhibited minor problems like not tripping the circuit breaker fast enough when stressed.

One impediment to interested buyers are local rules that may restrict balcony solar even in states where it is legal. Leon and Mauro discovered this the hard way when they placed their panels in front of their home, concerned the numerous trees behind their house would shade them. But a zoning employee soon knocked on their door and said city rules prohibited panels there. The couple’s plug-in panels remain in place while they work with the zoning board in hopes of loosening those restrictions.

Leon and Mauro still draw power from the grid for their air conditioner and major appliances, but they have shaved nearly $100 total from Utah’s typically low electric bills since May. Mauro especially loves the benefit to the environment, because solar energy does not emit the greenhouse gasses that lead to climate change. Experts estimate that even the energy used to produce the solar panels is offset in less than two years of use.

“When we first heard about it, we thought it seemed way too good to be true, to just plug a solar panel into the wall and generate electricity,” Mauro says. “But it turned out that really was all we had to do to produce clean energy and save money.”