A little rant about American pluginsolar safety concerns

The New York Times has two articles published: „What You Need to Know About Installing Plug-In Solar Panels” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/business/energy-environment/plug-in-solar-panel-guide.html) and „Plug-In Solar Panels Are Starting to Sprout in U.S. Backyards” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/business/energy-environment/plug-in-balcony-solar.html).

Some of the way they talk about pluginsolar is a little bit misleading: „buyers can now pick them up at IKEA in that country”. The Ikea website in Germany sells them through their Svea Solar online Store and Brand (https://shop.sveasolar.de/ikea?page=2). But I haven’t seen the products actually in the local Freiburg IKEA Store, it may be other cities have them. The products are from Ecoflow. I suspect they try to use to generate interest in their other renewables offerings, like Wallboxes, roof top solar and heat pumps but the pluginsolar systems seem to be sold only online and then sent out to by a truckage company, DHL or UPS don’t transport solar panels, as the exceed size and space limits here.

But you can pick them up at the usual hardware stores like OBI, toom and Bauhaus and even at grocery chains like LIDL. Especially the Brits seem to be obsessed with buying pluginsolar at LIDL. We usually advise consumer to check before they buy at LILD (their store brand Parkside had some quality issues with inverters) and hardware stores as they were expensive compared to more specialised online stores. 

„But the American electrical system is different enough from Germany’s that panels sold there cannot be used here.” Also „Once certified panels are available, can I really install them myself“

This sentence uses panels as a synonym for plug-in-solar system. Indeed solar panels are the same all over the world and there are no specific balcony solar panels. However the inverters have to be different, as the US uses a 110 V system and Europe a 230 V system. 

So it would be more correct to state that “inverters that are sold in Germany cannot be used in the US” it appears the one sold in Europe HF-800-WB is different from the American one HMS-500-1WM-LV. I have not yet found out if this is actually different hardware or just a different firmware (option). 

It seems that there are UL3700 certified inverters (at least this one by Hoymiles: https://www.hoymiles.com/us/hiflowpro.html) 

So in theory you could have a inverter with a UL 1741, UL 3700, IEEE 1547 compliance. I’m not completly certain if UL 3700 compliance needs more. The German VDE-AR-N 4105: 2018 needs more (unser manual, certified mounting, …). Thats why so far nobody sells a certified system in Germany. https://balkon.solar/news/2025/11/22/what-does-the-new-german-plug-in-pv-norm-say/

Then there is this whole “lineworker endangerment” issue. This is uniquely North American. In Germany the discussion was about safety when touching the exposed pins of the plug. Even before the VDE-AR-N 4105 this was not a relevant issue. As inverters turn off within less than a second.

American utilities imagine the absence of an anti-islanding function, which all inverters have and the seem to have dangers posed by a combination of Diesel generators operated without any regard to safety during power outages in mind. See the SACE study on this: https://cleanenergy.org/news/plug-in-solar-is-safer-but-the-regulations-dont-reflect-that/

I personally think there should be more consumer education in the US on safe operation of diesel generators. Because when we train during disaster exercises there are lots of safety regulations (distance from tents, fire extinguishers, not storing diesel near it) to be observed. And of course its plainly stupid to power your house through a “suicide cord” and have no disconnection to the grid because then you power the entire neighbourhood and it goes through a transformer (kind of reverse) and this endangers line workers. 

From my point of view this is also strange, because in Germany there is  DIN VDE 0105 with its 5 safety rules, which was taught to me in grade 4 elementary school and if you observe 3 and 4: „Verify absence of voltage on all poles / Earth and short-circuit” then the line worker should be safe even if someone powers up his generator. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BCnf_Sicherheitsregeln)