Want to lower your electricity bill and help power your home with an abundant renewable energy source — the sun?
OK, maybe you don’t have a rooftop where you can install $20,000 to 30,000 worth of solar panels, get the permits and hire a crew to put them in.
But there’s a simple, affordable solution for people who own houses or condos, or are renting an apartment.
Plug-in balcony solar panels are a do-it-yourself clean energy solution that not only help power appliances and devices in homes but lower electricity costs at a time when the cost of power — along with everything else — is rising.
They’ve become popular in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in the U.S. While these plug-and-play units aren’t readily available in Canada, and could face bureaucratic hurdles in getting approved, solar energy proponents say there’s likely to be consumer interest and calls for Canada to get on board.
“We’re about to find out what that pent-up demand is,” said Phil McKay from the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA).
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You may have seen portable 100-watt solar panels at your local hardware store that you can take with you camping or to a cabin in order to charge your cellphone or other small devices.
Plug-in balcony solar kits are somewhat similar, says Kevin Chou, co-founder of San Francisco Bright Saver, which aims to bring this technology to a wider North American market.
The difference is that with balcony solar, you’re able to power small appliances, lights and other household electrical items from a lightweight panel you can install yourself on a balcony or the side of your home.
A plug-in balcony solar unit that can generate up to 800 watts can cost between $2,000 to $2,300 US, but a 200-watt kit sells for as low as $400.
As Chou explains, the panels connect to an inverter, much like your typical rooftop photovoltaic solar panels, except that it’s much smaller and plugs directly into a standard wall outlet.
“It just pushes electricity into that plug at a slightly higher pressure than the rest of the electricity coming in from the grid, so that you’re using the electricity from your solar panels first,” Chou said. Any unused power is absorbed into the power grid.
Some newer and costlier kits also have batteries that can store electricity for later use.
Chou says the power from these systems isn’t significant enough to address all your home energy needs.
In Canada, the average detached home uses approximately 13,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, while an apartment or condo in a highrise building might use around 5,900 kWh per year, according to Statistics Canada.
But depending on where you live and and your overall power costs, he says balcony solar can shave some money off your monthly bill.
In northern California, where Chou lives, it can work out to $30 to $50 US off per month.
Chou says he was inspired to try to develop a market for plug-in balcony solar units in North America following their success in Germany in recent years.
Balkonkraftwerk, as it’s known in German (translation: balcony power plant), grew in popularity after the country began to move away from its reliance on cheap Russian oil following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which increased the cost of power for residents.
Around 1.5 million German homes, many of them apartments, are registered as using balcony solar panels — although many more might be unregistered.
McKay says they’re not contributing a huge amount of solar power to Germany’s grid, “but what it’s doing is impacting millions and millions of people’s homes” by saving as much as 30 per cent on power bills, according to some estimates.
Demand is now growing in Spain and some other European countries, while the U.K. government announced last month it’s studying the potential for allowing balcony solar panels for apartments.
Germany’s Balkonkraftwerk success story also caught the eye of Utah lawmaker Raymond Ward, a Republican state representative who successfully passed legislation earlier this year to allow the use of plug-in solar panels, a first anywhere in the U.S.
Given the political environment in the U.S. and divisiveness over climate change, it might come as a surprise that a red state like Utah is leading the charge. Ward says it was a matter of offering residents an opportunity to save money, and his legislation gets “the government out of their way.”
He says it wasn’t that plug-and-play solar units were prohibited, but rather that the regulations only covered rooftop solar panel systems, which weren’t allowed to be plugged directly into an existing electrical system and had a contract with the local utility.
“That makes sense if you’re going to cover your whole roof with them and expect the utility to pay you some money for that power,” Ward said. “But it doesn’t make sense if you’re just buying something little and plugging it in and not asking [the utility] for anything.”
Utilities got on board, he says, once they realized they wouldn’t have to compensate customers for the power they were generating.
Part of the challenge, he said, was certification. The units, as a whole, are not UL-certified, the standard certification for electronics in the U.S. But the individual components are, which has given some companies the green light to sell their plug-in solar kits in Utah and some other parts of the country.
UL is also recognized certification in Canada, but the Canadian Standards Association (CSA Group) certifies most electronics for use in this country.
CSA Group confirmed to CBC News that balcony solar units “are not evaluated or certified as standalone products” and that “the complete plug-in configuration falls outside the scope of our current certification frameworks.”
There’s also the challenge of getting provinces, municipalities and utilities on board.
CBC News reached out to various provincial and municipal governments, as well as utility providers, and found many had not yet considered the potential use of DIY plug-in solar panels or regard it as being similar to rooftop solar installations that require permits and licensed contractors to install.
Alberta, however, could provide an opportunity. A spokesperson for the province’s Ministry of Affordability and Utilities says balcony plug-in solar technology would fall under existing micro-generation regulation, which allows generators capable of producing less than 150 kilowatts of electricity to be connected to the grid.
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Liam O’Brien, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, sees value in giving people a “tangible connection” to energy resources.
But balcony plug-in solar isn’t necessarily the solution he’d like to see.
He’s more in favour of solar being integrated into buildings when they’re constructed or renovated — something that’s happened in some places in Canada, including an apartment building in Toronto and at a student residence at Halifax’s Saint Mary’s University.
O’Brien says integrating solar panels into construction not only centralizes the power generation but addresses any safety concerns around people affixing panels to their balconies themselves.
It’s also a better use of space, he says, and could save developers money on other material costs while offering a cheaper power source to residents.
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