By Catherine Owen Koning, Originally Published in The Monadnock Shopper News, Green Monadnock column, November 2026.
One of the most important tools to fight climate change is clean energy – using solar, wind, hydroelectric, or other non-carbon sources to produce electricity. You can then use that electricity to heat or cool your home, cook, drive your car, etc.
Solar panels are the most accessible clean energy source for the average person, but not everyone has the roof, the yard, or the situation for a large solar array. In many places around the world, plug-in photovoltaic panels, also called “balcony solar,” are becoming an option, and will be available for use in New Hampshire in 2027.
Recently, Clean Energy NH sponsored a webinar called Plug-In to Power Up: What NH Needs to Know About Balcony Solar, which you can view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEhloLS2ZY. Much of the information for this article came from that video.
What is plug-in solar?
These are small photovoltaic panels, a maximum of 1200 watts in New Hampshire, that plug into a standard outdoor wall outlet; they can be set up on a deck, balcony, or in your backyard. These systems are cheaper, smaller, and simpler than a typical solar installation, and they are available to renters as well as homeowners. They are also portable!
They are new to the US, but there are five million of these systems installed in Germany, as well as other countries.
When the sun is shining, the photovoltaic panel produces a flow of direct current, which the microinverter in the system converts to alternating current needed to run our appliances. Unfortunately, plug-in solar cannot be used as a backup during power outages. Because the plug-in panels are generating electricity and putting it into the whole grid, they are required to shut off when the power goes off, to protect the line workers who are trying to fix the outage.
In New Hampshire, if you put up your plug-in panel in a good sunny spot, it will generate enough electricity to save an average of about $281 a year; for a system that costs $1,500, this would pay for itself in about five years, according to Stephan Sherer of Craftstrom and Clean Energy NH. As the costs of these systems decrease, and efficiency of the panels increases, the payback will be much faster.
To maximize the benefits of a plug-in system, you will want to plug it into the same circuit as your major appliances, such as your AC or refrigerator. This brings up safety considerations, because if the consumer plugs the panels in the wrong location, it can overload the circuit. Normally, when this happens, the circuit breaker will trip, but if the panel is plugged in on the same side of the circuit that the utility is pushing in electricity, the breaker won’t detect it, and the circuit could be overloaded, resulting in potentially dangerous overheating.
To avoid this, be sure to buy a system that includes a power meter, which throttles the production to match the demand in the circuit, avoiding the overload. Some people use the solar panels to charge a plug-in battery during the day and then run appliances off it at night to avoid excess production getting out onto the grid or overloading a circuit. An updated safety plug may also be needed.
So, what seemed like an easy solution at the start will need some clarification before most people will want to give it a try. The state is currently working on safety rules and guidance. To help alleviate the confusion, Franklin Pierce University’s Institute for Climate Action is working with the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative to create a demonstration DIY workshop and video to help consumers set up a system. This will help people navigate the confusion around safety issues.
According to their proposed project, if 10 percent of the population of the Monadnock Region installed a plug-in PV panel, it would create “a distributed 3.6 MW array, which can deliver ~four gigawatt-hours of electricity annually, offsetting 1500 to 1800 metric tons of CO2 every year.”
Given how common these systems are in other countries, plug-in solar panels will soon be an excellent choice to reduce our climate pollution and save money!