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California renters, apartment dwellers and others who can’t install full rooftop solar systems are one step closer to lowering their electric bills with smaller plug-in solar panels.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed the Plug and Play Solar Act, a bill by Sen. Scott Wiener that will allow anyone — renter or homeowner — to set small panels on their patios or fences and plug them directly into wall outlets without having to navigate any utility permissions.
“This law and the small solar panels it unlocks put people, including renters, in charge of their energy bills,” Wiener said in a statement.
The systems — also called “balcony solar” — are already popular in Germany and at least nine other U.S. states have legalized them. The bill allows panels powerful enough to run a refrigerator and a few small household appliances — a maximum of 1,200 watts.
Many Californians have already gone ahead in the legal gray area, purchasing the panels online and plugging them in. But those looking to do things by the book can’t plug and play quite yet. The bill applies only to panels sold in the U.S. that have been certified as safe by gold-standard testing groups such as UL Solutions.
Bernadette del Chiaro, a senior vice president at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said there are at least two companies that expect to be approved by the end of the year. Her group co-sponsored the bill. “That would mean products on shelves not long after that in 2027.”
Pacific Gas & Electric lobbied against the bill and did not respond to an immediate request for comment. It previously expressed safety concerns and concerns that people without panels would end up disproportionately paying for the costs of maintaining the grid.
Newsom also signed other legislation Wednesday that advocates for small-scale solar and home batteries had been pushing for.
A bill by Sen. John Becker, SB 905, will, among other measures, require California to identify where existing power lines can carry more electricity and assess whether home batteries, smart thermostats and other devices that share power or ramp down when the grid is stressed could make more sense than costly infrastructure upgrades.
His SB 913 will pave a path for such devices — known as virtual power plants — to sell power directly into the California energy market.
The signatures come after Newsom failed to include money in this year’s budget to keep the state’s biggest virtual power plant funded through next year.
Newsom also vetoed AB 1813, a third-time effort to force the California Public Utilities Commission to develop a more robust community solar program, in which residents sign up to participate in a small solar array near where they live and pay monthly at a discount on their electrical bills.
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Blanca Begert is a climate and energy reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
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