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California Becomes Latest State to Approve Plug-in Solar | States across the country are letting residents install small solar systems without utility permission. (www.bloomberg.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/energy@slrpnk.net

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The bipartisan bill approved by the state legislature on Tuesday now goes to Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until Sept. 30 to sign it into law. Newsom hasn’t taken a position on the legislation and his office declined to comment. If he does enact the bill, California will become the ninth state to legalize plug-in solar since 2025.

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[–] Kind_to_Everyone@slrpnk.net 3 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

It depends upon what you mean by worth it.

If you mean evironmentally, it is likely the cheapest way in the long run to offset carbon intensive power usage, but that depends upon your location's daylight energy mix.

If you mean financially, your payback period will depend upon whether you have a free circuit at your dwelling to plug into, the panel positioning and solar intensity, your cost of capital, and your prevailing cost of power. Your payback could be anywhere from two to over ten years.

If you mean as a backup power source, they are locked out in case of grid loss of power.

I would install one if I could, but my state lets its power monopoly call the shots. So instead I subscribe to solar.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 1 points 30 minutes ago

I have been interested in plug in batteries instead. I could do it for my own house but not sure about the solar as well. Probably run my house off the battery and plug the mains into the battery to top it up.

Jackery, ecoflow and a few others all make pretty large multi kWh batteries. Seen some that are 20+ kWh. Not sure how much solar input they take, pretty sure some can do a few kW solar input too.

Then it is a matter of fitting the solar panels though. If my garden was larger it would probably be better, not sure on fitting them to the roof myself. In summer I could probably get quite a bit from my garden but winter its mostly in the shade.

Might be worth analysing my energy usage more. Heat pump would require an electrician and a proper house battery, not really a DIY job. Everything else could be DIY. My summer usage is like 150kW a month and that still includes hot water on the heat pump. So I presume I could do everything else on a fairly small battery and solar panels.

Alternatively, no battery and get rooftop solar and just sell the extra energy to the grid to pay for my energy usage when there isn't enough solar.

[–] BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

The ones I looked at had couple of plugs on the controller to plug things directly, that would keep running off solar/battery in case of outage, which is nice to at least cover essentials like fridge/freezer.