Last October, Colorado state Rep. Lesley Smith was in Germany, visiting her husband’s family. While strolling around her sister-in-law’s neighborhood, she glimpsed a solar panel hanging off an apartment building balcony — something she’d never seen before. “Oh, my goodness, look at that,” Smith remembered thinking.
Small-scale household solar is common in Germany, where an estimated 4 million units have been installed. It’s a simple concept: Just plug one or two solar panels attached to a microinverter into any household outlet, place the panels outside on a patio or balcony, and you can generate enough power to offset around 15% to 20% of your energy usage. The gear costs several hundred dollars and can be set up almost anywhere, so renters and homeowners alike can enjoy the cost savings and climate benefits of clean energy.
But in the U.S., a tangle of regulatory and market constraints has prevented widespread adoption of the technology, known as balcony or plug-in solar.
That could soon change, however: This year, as of press time, lawmakers in 27 states — including Colorado’s Rep. Smith — have introduced plug-in solar legislation that would enable anyone to start harnessing the power of the sun and shaving down their power bills. In the West, plug-in solar also offers a way to tap into some of the region’s vast solar potential while offsetting rising electricity costs, said Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, one of the leading groups advocating for it. Lawmakers this year have introduced bills in the Western states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, though as of late February, Washington, Arizona, Wyoming and New Mexico’s bills had failed to advance.
The West has, in fact, led the charge on balcony solar: Smith and other lawmakers modeled their bills on a first-in-the-nation plug-in solar law that passed unanimously in Utah last year. Utah’s law exempts the technology from costly permitting requirements, such as registering an interconnection agreement with the local utility, something rooftop solar users must do. It also establishes power wattage limits, removes liability for utilities when people install devices on their own and requires units to be certified under a national electrical safety standard.
In Utah, the legislation was motivated by the notion that governments shouldn’t get in people’s way. “Everybody that wants one should be able to buy one,” said Republican state Rep. Raymond Ward, who introduced Utah’s law. In Germany, people with balcony solar are typically able to recoup their initial costs within around five years. Ward noted that people in states with especially high electricity prices, such as Alaska and California, could pay off their initial investment through energy savings even sooner.
Smith, a Democrat, hopes that as state regulations fall into place, more manufacturers will develop and sell plug-in solar products so that residents can easily buy and set up the technology. “Right now, one cannot go to a Costco or Home Depot and get their own system,” she said, though constituents are eager to try the technology; Smith has already heard of people buying or DIYing their own plug-in kits. “Our feeling is, if we pass the bill in Colorado, and especially if bills similar to this start passing across the U.S., then it would just open up the market.”
The fact that this year’s bills require neither public subsidies nor funding could be key to garnering bipartisan support, according to Stryker. “This is a market-driven solution,” she said. “We really just have to strip down regulations, make them make sense for these little systems, and then market forces will drive this.”
“Right now, one cannot go to a Costco or Home Depot and get their own system.”
UTAH’S LAW AND THE MANY BILLS modeled after it remove one major hurdle — namely, permitting regulations. But plug-in solar also faces another challenge: the need for a mature product safety standard. National standards for household electrical products are issued by a company called UL Solutions, which certifies thousands of devices to ensure they can be used safely without risk of fire or shock.
When Utah’s law passed in March 2025, no UL standard for plug-in solar devices existed. Now, it does. In January, UL released a preliminary standard for safety and certification criteria. The new standard, which is active for certification but not fully finalized, is vital for this year’s pending plug-in solar bills, all of which reference a UL or equivalent national safety standard. Although no plug-in solar products have been certified under it yet, manufacturers can already submit products for testing and certification, said Ken Boyce, vice president of principal engineering at UL.
But Ward and other advocates say that, in its current form, the UL standard is too restrictive to prompt the broad market changes needed for the technology to thrive. Ward pointed out that UL’s requirement that an electrician must help install the product, for example, defeats one of the main points of the legislation he championed — allowing people to simply plug in the device and use it like a minifridge or similar appliance. And Ken Hutchings of CraftStrom, a Houston-based plug-in solar company, took issue with the standard’s limits to home battery capacity, among other aspects. The company plans to certify under the standard once it’s finalized, he said in an email, but in the meantime will certify under existing standards for component parts such as inverters.
“Done well, (the UL standard) could give regulators and utilities a clear framework and reduce uncertainty,” Hutchings said. “Done poorly, it could constrain useful storage capacity and add cost and friction in ways that slow adoption of otherwise safe plug‑in solar solutions.”
Note: This story was updated to clarify the nature of the new UL standards as active for certification but not fully finalized.
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