What would you imagine needs to happen to allow people to utilize solar safely with the grid without having to deal with all of the current regulatory challenges with permitting - lowering the bar so much that someone who is not technical could walk into a home improvement store, buy a solar panel and plug it into their house and start generating power.
Why isn't there a standard & regulations for plugging in ~ 1500w of power to the grid today? What would this standard & regulations need to look like?
My guess is
- Specialized outlet designed for plugging in renewable energy limited to 1500w of 120AC - so it carries the same risks as using an extension cord with a 1500w AC heater.
- The solar panel/inverter combo, since it generates energy needs to have its own breaker integrated into it, and ground wire to provide safety.
- The electric company has to provide a net metering capable meter
- I think this needs to be a dedicated circuit with a single plug for generating energy, so the supply side can't overload it.
I'm just trying to imagine a world where we had outlets you could plug stuff into to feed back into the grid, to really democratize energy generation, so everyone could partake.
The closest thing I've found is the ConnectDER, which is a meter you can easily plug solar into, but it's not something someone non-technical could just plug stuff into safely.
Today you could potentially just buy this microinverter off amazon, plug in a couple panels to it, and plug it into your existing 120v wall socket (for the record,
I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THIS - YOU MUST FOLLOW ALL LOCAL CODES AND REGULATIONS!). It has islanding, so if the grid goes down it shuts down automatically and you will not put anyone w/ the utility in danger. You can string multiple microinverters together (or they have a 1400w version which accepts 4 panels). I would suggest using a dedicated branch, but it is not 100% necessary. We have breakers to protect wires from homeowners overloading them. If you did overload it, would it not just flip the breaker?
Is there any law on the books that actually says this is illegal for a homeowner to do today? I think the worst that could happen would be your utility comes knocking at your door and tells you to unplug it. But they'd probably only notice if you had a larger system. 1500w or less when your consumption always exceeds? I doubt they'd ever notice.
I 100% agree with you,
there's no reason this should not be legal and common practice. The problem is the incentives are not there for the solar industry. People with interests in the industry love to make it extremely difficult for homeowners to take advantage of the sun without jumping through hoops.
Another idea, for folks with EV Level 2 chargers - Buy and install one which plugs into a dryer type plug at 240v. Plug your EV in at night to charge, and when you head of for work in the AM, plug in your solar array to backfeed. This would be a 'plug-and-play' way to get 240V backfeed at, say 40a or more, so you could easily run a 7.6kW inverter and just plug it in. It won't energize until it has been plugged in for something like 60 seconds, so you aren't at risk, so long as it isn't energized after it is unplugged.
In my case,
putting together a legitimate system (not the above one!), I can't even qualify for any credits through my state or my utility because I'm doing the install myself. If it is permitted and inspected (which it will be), why not give me the rebate? Well, because there's too much money protecting the interests of the solar industry, feeding exorbitant markups on parts and labor and sticking consumers with long term loans. Also, the rebate $ gets eaten up in the first few months each year, which actually puts a
bottleneck on adoption of solar because everyone waits until the next year to do their project so they can get the credit. The current incentives only benefit the solar industry, slow down adoption of solar generation, and turn a $5,000 project (
before incentives) into $20K+ project (
after incentives).
