Regulation

The day after plug-in solar went legal, the detail missing from the government's own announcement turns out to matter more than the headline: one compliant kit per property, a 28-day grid-registration duty, and only seven approved products on the market

With plug-in solar now legally on sale as of 27 August, a Byline Times investigation into the small print flags a hard single-device cap per property, a legal duty to notify the local grid within 28 days of installing, and landlord or freeholder permission requirements for renters and leaseholders that the official announcement did not spell out.

28 August 2026 · Source: Byline Times

Legal from yesterday is not the same as straightforward, and the detail that surfaced the day after 27 August is the kind that changes what a Kent household should actually do before ordering. The single biggest gap is the one-kit-per-property cap: the legislation permits one 800VA plug-in system per address, not one per socket or per room, which rules out the obvious workaround of buying two cheaper units to cover more of a home's daytime load. Anyone budgeting savings on the basis of multiple kits needs to rework the sums against a single 800W ceiling.

The grid-registration duty is the one this site's own coverage has already flagged in outline (the G98 DNO notification requirement), but the small print adds a hard deadline: registration has to happen within 28 days of installing, not at some point before you start drawing savings. A registration site, myplugin.solar, has launched specifically to make that step quick, which is worth using immediately on install day rather than filing it under things to do eventually, because missing the window puts the installation outside the legal framework that made it buyable in the first place.

Supply is narrower than the retailer headlines suggested too. As of this week only seven kits are confirmed compliant, and all seven are made by a single manufacturer, UKSOL. Cheaper non-compliant alternatives exist at roughly half the price of an approved kit, but buying one of those risks invalidating home insurance and sits outside the legal framework entirely, an important distinction from the compliant-but-pricier products this site has been tracking retailers stocking. Fitting on timber structures, fences, sheds, and timber-clad walls, is banned outright without separate council permission, which is a tighter restriction than the fire-remediation and ACM-cladding carve-out already covered here.

The renter and leaseholder angle is the part most likely to disappoint the audience this legalisation was pitched at. There is no statutory right to install as a tenant: permission from a landlord, freeholder or managing agent is still required and can be refused outright, which means the households with the least roof access, and the most to gain from an 800W plug-in kit, have the least guaranteed ability to actually fit one. Battery pairing is also off the table for now; a plug-in system cannot be connected to a home battery unless an electrician signs it off, with a simplified route not expected until next year. None of this reverses yesterday's legal change, but it narrows who can act on it immediately, and it is worth checking the single-kit cap, the 28-day registration deadline, and landlord permission before treating 27 August as a green light to order.

Read the original: Byline Times. Commentary is Sandwich Solar's own editorial view; the original reporting is credited to its publisher.

Get a solar quote See MCS installations