Changelog — UK plug-in solar transition
BS 7671 Amendment 4 Dataset last updated: 2 September 2026
This page tracks the UK plug-in / balcony solar regulatory transition under BS 7671 Amendment 4 and the updates we make to this site. Dates that have happened are shown plainly; future milestones are marked expected because they are anticipated, not confirmed. Newest first.
Anticipated (not yet confirmed)
| Date | Milestone | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| ~ October 2026 expected | End of the transitional period | By this point the legal and product-standard picture for DIY plug-in kits should be coherent end-to-end. Anticipated, not confirmed. |
Happened
| Date | Milestone | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 24 September 2026 reading | Register read again: 64 entries to 79 | We re-read the ENA type test register at 23:07 on 24 September 2026. It listed 79 distinct plug-in solar devices, 71 of them “Compliant” from nineteen manufacturers, against 64 and 56 eight days earlier. Nineteen entries were new and four had gone, all four “Non-compliant”, and no entry we already held changed status; the “Non-compliant” count stayed at eight. Longshen, Plugsol, The Solar Home, VALE, Voltacon and Zendure appear in our log for the first time; TSUNESS returned with three “Compliant” entries, and EcoFlow’s two new entries carry “Compliant”. The search API returned 80 rows for 79 distinct references — one came back twice, byte-identical — and we count distinct references. Seven of the nineteen new entries carry a published date of 15 or 16 September, on or before the evening we read the register eight days earlier, and were not returned to us then. |
| 16 September 2026 reading | Register read again: 50 entries to 64 | We re-read the ENA type test register at 23:02 on 16 September 2026. It listed 64 distinct plug-in solar devices, 56 of them “Compliant” from fifteen manufacturers, against 50 and 48 a week earlier. Fifteen entries were new and one had gone, and no entry we already held changed status. The “Non-compliant” count went from two to eight. Sigenergy, The Solar Centre and Worldwide Solar appear in our log for the first time; EcoFlow returned under a new reference, still “Non-compliant”. The search API returned 65 rows for 64 distinct references — one came back twice, byte-identical — and we count distinct references. Ten of the fifteen new entries carry a published date of 8 or 9 September, on or before the evening we read the register a week earlier, and were not returned to us then. |
| 9 September 2026 correction | Pages moved to the past tense | We re-read SI 2026/848 as made on 9 September 2026. Earlier versions of the legal guide and the law-is-made article said plug-in solar “becomes legal on 27 August 2026”; that date had passed. Both now carry a dated correction. Interim Product Specification v2 references left as they were. |
| 27 August 2026 | Regulations came into force — SI 2026 No. 848 | The plug-in route opened for a solar device with a maximum rated AC output not exceeding 800W complying with the Interim Product Specification v2. Regulation 3 extends to England, Wales and Scotland only. |
| 16 July 2026 | Regulations made — SI 2026 No. 848 | The Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 and Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002 (Amendment) Regulations 2026 were made, and laid before Parliament on 17 July 2026. |
| 30 June 2026 closed | DESNZ plug-in solar consultation closed (23:59) | The public consultation on legalising plug-in solar closed. DESNZ then legislated: the regulations were made on 16 July 2026 and came into force on 27 August 2026. DIY plug-in was not legal before that date. |
| 16 June 2026 opened | DESNZ opened the consultation to legalise plug-in solar | Government formally proposed legalisation via a PSSR amendment + DESNZ Interim Product Specification v1.0 (written statement HCWS118). Consultation stage — not yet legal. Details. |
| 16 June 2026 site | Added UK guides: renters, planning permission, and G98 (UK Power Networks) | Expanded the practical guidance set for renters and the DNO notification route. |
| 15 June 2026 site | Site launched — honest BS 7671 Amendment 4 guide | First publication of BalconySolarHub, framing what is actually legal today during the transition. |
| 15 April 2026 in force | BS 7671 Amendment 4 came into force | Microgeneration up to 800W is now classed as a portable appliance, provided the safety requirements are met (800W AC cap, single-phase, type-approved anti-islanding inverter, RCD protection). |
| 16 March 2026 | BS 7671 Amendment 4 ratified by the IET | Industry signal that the rule change was final. No live effect until it came into force on 15 April 2026. |
Site and dataset
Changes to what this site publishes, kept separate from the legal milestones above because they are not the same kind of event.
| Date | Change | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2026 | The G98 fee claim is withdrawn | Several pages said the G98 notification is free. No source we have read says so: the ENA connection guide, NGED and UK Power Networks were re-read on 4 September 2026 and none states a fee or states that it is free. Twenty-seven wordings across thirteen files now match what /g98-notification/ and the dataset already said. The June consultation article carries a dated correction. |
| 2 September 2026 | Dataset v1.4 — the DIY notification note closes | The ENA published a registration portal at myplugin.solar. Read 2 September 2026, its FAQ states that registering a device there sends the notification to the DNO. applies_to_diy_householder stays null because EREC G98 is unchanged, but its note now records the route, with the legal-requirement claim attributed to the portal rather than asserted by us. The Zenodo deposit remains at v1.3. |
| 16 August 2026 | New guide: G98 protection settings at 253 V | Publishes the trip points and the 90 minute operating range test from a type test certificate issued against Engineering Recommendation G98, and sets them against the published output range of an EU-edition APsystems EZ1-M. Read it. We have not read G98 itself; the page says so. |
| 2 August 2026 | Zenodo DOI, and the G98 page rewritten | The DNO dataset is deposited at Zenodo and has a concept DOI, so /developers/ and /g98-notification/ now cite a permanent identifier. /g98-notification/ was rewritten from the dataset rather than edited, because what was there described the notification process as free and self-serve. |
| 1 August 2026 | DNO dataset published, then corrected twice | /data/uk-plug-in-solar.json publishes SI 2026 No. 848 verbatim alongside the G98 requirements of all six DNOs across fourteen licence areas, with null where no primary source states a figure, plus a per-operator split with an MPAN 10–23 lookup. v1.1 corrected a material error: the 28-day deadline is national, set by EREC G98 §1.1 under ESQCR 22(2)(c), not each operator’s own policy. v1.2 and v1.3 added evidence from the operators’ own pages, and the visible version chip was corrected from 1.0 to 1.3. /data/ and /data/dno/ previously returned the homepage with HTTP 200 and now have real index pages. |
The regulations were made (SI 2026 No. 848, 16 July 2026) and came into force on 27 August 2026. For the position today, see Is plug-in solar legal in the UK? Informational, not legal or electrical advice.