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Rooftop solar panels can be a way to cut your electricity bills and take personal action on climate change, but they can be expensive and overwhelming to install. So what if you could just set up some panels in your backyard or hang them off a balcony? In Germany, these kinds of solar panels are widespread. Now there's a movement trying to bring them to the U.S. Laura Klivans reports from KQED in San Francisco.
LAURA KLIVANS, BYLINE: Matt Milner lives in Berkeley, California, and he has a problem. Electricity rates in the state are really high, so he'd like to generate some of his own power. But getting rooftop solar is a big undertaking. Then he heard about plug-in solar.
MATT MILNER: The permitting side of getting rooftop solar is daunting to many people - and the huge financial commitment. Whereas this is just, like, oh, they'll come on a Friday morning and install your panels, and then you're good to go.
KLIVANS: Plug-in solar uses just a few panels. They're connected to a gadget that converts solar power to the kind of electricity used in your home, with a cord that plugs into a standard outlet. The cost for Milner is under 1,700 bucks, compared to tens of thousands of dollars for a traditional array.
MILNER: This kind of allows us to dip our toe in a little bit without having a huge financial cost and, you know, see how it works for us.
KLIVANS: The panels were installed by a nonprofit called Bright Saver. Co-founder Kevin Chou says their goal is to bring portable plug-in solar to the U.S. market.
KEVIN CHOU: When it becomes that simple to basically just go to, you know, Walmart or go to Costco and buy one of these things, that's kind of where I think the world can get to in three or four years.
KLIVANS: He says a small system with two panels can cover about a fifth of the average Californian's electricity needs, like your refrigerator and devices. But there's a problem - in most of the U.S., it's not entirely legal to just set this up and plug it in. The technology is so new here, it's not in most electrical codes. Here's Kevin Chou.
CHOU: There's kind of these big gaps where it's not clear if - it's certainly not that you can't do this, but it's also not clear that you can.
KLIVANS: To put in a system right now, you have to jump through the same regulatory hoops and fees as if you were setting up a full rooftop solar array. That's in part because of safety concerns. If they're installed incorrectly, plug-in panels could cause a fire or endanger utility workers. But Bright Saver and other organizations want to make it simpler. Utah is already doing that. Last year, state representative Raymond Ward read about the millions of solar panels hanging from balconies in Germany and thought, why not here?
RAYMOND WARD: If a person wants to buy a product, we should not have our regulatory apparatus make it so that it's just not available to them.
KLIVANS: He wrote a bill that would allow plug-in solar without registration if it meets certain codes and safety standards. The bill passed unanimously. Ward, a Republican, says the tech has appeal across the political spectrum.
WARD: On a blue scale, we would say this is clean power. This does not produce CO2. It is renewable energy. On red terms, I think you would say, if I can do something that gets people what they need, instead of trying to set up a government program to try and help take care of their problem, that would be desirable.
KLIVANS: Plug-in solar arrays can only cover a slice of overall energy demand, even if everyone had them. Dan Kammen is an energy professor at Johns Hopkins University.
DAN KAMMEN: There's no question this balcony solar is a small, small piece.
KLIVANS: Still, he says, every bit helps reduce planet-warming emissions, and every array is a conversation starter.
KAMMEN: What we do is not just signaling to others, but it's signaling to ourself. And by what - by that, what I mean is, you know, it's environmental education, and that's priceless.
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KLIVANS: Back in Berkeley, Matt Milner has two new 6-foot-tall solar panels leaning against his backyard fence. Bright Saver co-founder Rupert Mayer gets ready to plug them in.
RUPERT MAYER: Big moment.
KLIVANS: And electricity from the panels flows into Milner's house.
MILNER: We're basically carbon-neutral right now, then.
MAYER: For the moment? Absolutely, yes. We are, yes. You are running your house on clean, free energy from your backyard.
KLIVANS: Something that could become more common if other states adopt legislation like Utah's. For NPR, I'm Laura Klivans in Berkeley. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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