Battery storage within the device is not permitted under the plug-in route. That excludes EcoFlow STREAM, Anker Solix Solarbank, Zendure SolarFlow and Jackery Navi from being plugged into a 13 A socket under SI 2026 No. 848. They are not illegal — they need a conventional installation instead.
That is the whole answer. The rest of this page is why it is true, which products it catches, and what the alternative actually involves.
It matters because the battery-integrated all-in-one is exactly what most people picture when they think of plug and play solar. You buy one box, hang the solar panels, plug it in, and it stores the solar power you do not use during the day. That product exists, it works, and current UK electrical regulations do not let it reach your energy bills through a plug socket.
The regulations that make plug-in solar lawful in Great Britain from 27 August were written around generation. Everything below follows from that one design decision — including which solar products you will actually be able to buy, and which plug-in systems stay off the shelves.
The Exclusion Is in the Law, Not Just the Specification
This is the part that gets skipped, and it matters because it tells you how hard the exclusion is.
SI 2026 No. 848creates a new defined term, “plug-in microgenerator”, and the plug-in route only applies to devices that fall inside it. The definition has five limbs. The fifth is the one that shuts batteries out. A plug-in microgenerator is a device which:
is not designed to import electrical energy from a low voltage consumer’s installation for the purpose of storing energy for later supply, other than for control or auxiliary functions permitted by the Plug-in Solar Device Interim Product Specification
Read that limb carefully, because it is narrower than “no batteries”. What it catches is a device designed to importenergy from your installation in order to store it for later supply. In plain terms: grid charging. A device that charges from the mains and discharges back into it later is not a plug-in microgenerator, so it never reaches the specification’s requirements at all — it is outside the route before you start checking wattages.
There is a second and broader route to the same answer, and it is the one that does the heavy lifting. The specification does not apply to battery-integrated products at all. Its scope clause says so directly:
This document applies to only plug-in solar device. It does not apply to other technologies including but not limited to … Plug-in battery systems; Plug-in solar PV devices integrated with battery systems
That is a scope exclusion, not a prohibition — the specification contains no clause banning batteries, and it is worth being precise about the mechanism because it is widely misdescribed. The effect is decisive all the same. The plug-in route requires compliance with a specification that does not cover your product. There is nothing to comply with.
Note what that second route does notrequire: any knowledge of how a given device charges. The scope exclusion catches battery-integrated products whether they grid-charge or store only PV-side DC. So the conclusion does not depend on the charging architecture of any particular kit — which matters, because that architecture is not something we can establish from a citable source.
Two routes, same answer, and one of them is in the statutory instrument rather than in guidance that a future amendment could revise quietly.
What the Plug-In Route Does Permit
For completeness, the envelope a compliant device has to sit inside:
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Maximum AC output | 800 VA |
| Maximum AC current | 3.5 A |
| Phase | Single only |
| Maximum DC panel capacity | 2,000 W (under review) |
| Maximum PV modules | 4, no more than 2 in series |
| Maximum DC open-circuit voltage | 120 V DC |
| Maximum residual DC current | 5 mA |
| Plug | Factory-fitted, 5 A fuse, partially insulated pins |
| Battery storage in the device | Out of scope |
| Connection | Socket circuits only |
Generation only, in other words. A small-scale solar system that plugs in via a standard UK socket, producing electricity while the sun is on the solar panels and feeding it straight into whatever is running in the flat at the time. A typical plug-in kit is designed to work without any input from you at all. The envelope is deliberately tight enough that the wiring in an ordinary home does not need reassessing, which is the whole reason the plug-in route can exist without an electrician.
Compliance with the IET Wiring Regulations — BS 7671:2018+A4:2026, published 15 April 2026— is required on top of the table above. In force in Great Britain from 27 August 2026.
One footnote on that first row, because the two documents do not use the same unit. The statutory instrument defines a plug-in microgenerator as having a maximum rated alternating current output “not exceeding 800watts”. IPS v2 expresses the cap as 800 VA, alongside a 3.5A ceiling. Watts and volt-amperes are not interchangeable — they coincide only at unity power factor — so the two figures are not self-evidently the same limit. We are not going to guess which governs or why they differ. In practice this is unlikely to trouble a buyer, because a compliant device will be built and declared against both documents. It matters if you are reading the instrument itself.
This is a route, not a general permission
The Kits This Catches
| Product | Plug-in route (13 A socket) | Conventional installation |
|---|---|---|
| EcoFlow STREAM series | Excluded — battery-integrated | Available |
| Anker Solix Solarbank series | Excluded — battery-integrated | Available |
| Zendure SolarFlow | Excluded — battery-integrated | Available |
| Jackery Navi 2000 | Excluded — battery-integrated | Available |
These are, not coincidentally, the plug-and-play products most people searching for balcony solar have been looking at. They are the well-reviewed, well-distributed, genuinely good ones. The exclusion is not a comment on their quality — it is a comment on their architecture. We first set this out in our analysis of the battery rules, and the individual product pages carry the same status line — including our Zendure SolarFlow coverage.
We are deliberately not listing model numbers, capacities or prices for these. UK model designations for this category have been moving, and inventing a specific one to look authoritative would be worse than leaving it out.
The table above turns on one thing only: whether the product integrates battery storage. Where a manufacturer describes a product as an all-in-one with storage built in, the scope exclusion applies. If a series turns out to have a storage-free variant, that variant is a different product and could take the plug-in route on its own merits — which is the whole point of the next section.
There is a second-order effect worth knowing about too. A compliant plug-in device’s instructions have to carry a warning against pairing it with a battery energy storage system. So the exclusion is not only about all-in-one boxes — bolting a separate battery onto a compliant generation-only kit is also outside what the route contemplates.
Brand Excluded, or Model Excluded?
Here is where most summaries of this go wrong, and the distinction has real consequences for whether you write a manufacturer off.
The exclusion attaches to the device configuration. Not to the company.
A brand whose flagship is battery-integrated can still bring a separate panels-plus-microinverter product through the plug-in route, because that product would meet the definition. Nothing stops it. That is exactly why our certification tracker marks these brands “not yet verified” at brand level rather than “excluded” — the brand-level status is genuinely open, even where a specific model is definitively shut out.
So the practical instruction is the same one that applies everywhere in this area: check the model against the register, never the badge. A manufacturer can simultaneously have one product that cannot use this route and another that can. A compliant plug-in solar kit and an excluded battery system may sit side by side in the same brand’s UK range, on a balcony or garden mounting kit that is identical in both cases.
Check the model, not the badge
“But It’s on the ENA Register”
Two different things get called approval, and separating them clears up most of the confusion in this category.
A listing assessed against G98 or G99 says a device meets the network connection requirements for connecting to the low voltage network — that it disconnects properly when the supply fails, and behaves itself on the network. Plenty of storage products hold those listings. That is a real assessment and it means something.
It does not mean the device can be plugged into a socket under the new route. The plug-in route requires a listing under the register’s Plug-in Solar device Type, identified as compliant, plus a compliance declaration on the product. A storage device listing is not that, however positive it looks.
The register makes this easy to get wrong because every device category shares one table. Anker, for example, holds two entries marked Compliant, both published 6 August 2026 — and both are Energy Storage Devices at 5 kW. Anker’s plug-in solar entry is a different record entirely, at 0.8 kW, and it is marked Non-compliant, as is every other entry currently under that Type.
The position on the live register is that no plug-in solar device is assessed as compliant. Where you see a claim that a particular device is the first compliant plug-in solar product, the register does not currently support it. Our piece on the register sets out the current entries, what their status means, and how to check them yourself.
And for completeness: CE and UKCA marks are not the test either. A dedicated conformity mark for plug-in solar is only being considered.
The Route a Battery Kit Can Actually Use
None of the above means an all-in-one kit is a paperweight. It means the installation is a different kind of job.
Broadly, the alternative is a conventional solar installation rather than a plug and socket. The same hardware — panels and a microinverter, or panels and a battery system — wired in by an electrician to BS 7671 Amendment 4, connected properly rather than through a 13 A plug socket, with the appropriate network operator application rather than the plug-in device route. Under UK regulations that is an ordinary piece of electrical work, which is the point: nothing about a battery kit is exotic, it simply is not something you plug in.
What that changes in practice is worth being blunt about:
- Cost.You are paying for an electrician and a design, not just for hardware. That changes the arithmetic on energy costs considerably — a home energy upgrade rather than an appliance purchase.
- Permanence. It is a fixed installation. It does not come with you when you move.
- Consent.For a leaseholder or a renter, a fixed installation usually needs the freeholder’s or landlord’s agreement, where a plug-in device may not. This is often the deciding factor.
For a lot of people that arithmetic changes the answer. An all-in-one kit that looked like a weekend job turns out to be a small installation project, and that is a materially different proposition — better to know before buying than after.
If storage is the part you actually want, our guide to battery storage alongside balcony solar sets out what the options look like once you are outside the plug-in route.
Who this lands on hardest is worth naming. The new regulations were written to help UK households that cannot fit rooftop solar — renters, flat owners, anyone without a roof of their own. Those are precisely the people for whom a fixed installation is hardest, because it needs permission from a landlord or freeholder and it does not move with you. So the exclusion of plug-in batteries falls most heavily on the group the plug-in route exists to serve. That is not a conspiracy, it is a consequence of doing panels first and storage later, but it is worth saying out loud.
The practical upshot: from 27 August, households will be able to install plug-in panels and reduce energy use from the grid during daylight, but they cannot yet shift that solar energy into the evening. If the UK government wants plug-in solar to give renters real control of their energy, a storage route is the missing half — and until it arrives, a generation-only kit is what is on offer.
Why Storage Was Left Out
The short version is that generation and storage raise different questions, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero chose to answer the easier one first.
A small-scale plug-in device that generates up to 800VA — an 800W kit, in the shorthand everyone actually uses — and disconnects on loss of mains is a bounded problem. The grid-safety question has a known answer, which is what the anti-islanding requirements in G98 are for. A device that also charges and discharges on its own schedule brings thermal behaviour and fire safety into scope, and those are product-safety questions rather than grid-connection ones. They need their own work.
The Interim Product Specification is explicitly interim — a bridge while a full standard is developed. Storage needs its own route through that process.
What We Don’t Know
There is no published date for a battery route, and no announcement about when UK solar rules might bring plug-in storage into scope. If you see a specific month or quarter quoted, somebody has estimated it, and an estimate presented confidently is still an estimate. We are not going to add one.
Two things genuinely are flagged as open. The 2,000W DC panel cap is retained from version 1 of the specification and marked as under review. And the one-device-per-household position holds “unless and until” Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 2026 is amended, with no date attached to that either.
We will update this page, not predict it
If You Already Own One
Nothing here bricks a kit you have already bought. The device is unchanged; what has become clear is which route it installs by.
Off-grid use — a DIY solar setup charging a unit that is not connected to your household circuits — sits outside this framework entirely, though it changes what the kit is for. Otherwise the conventional route is the one available. Our guide for people who have already bought a kit works through the checks in more detail, and our Jackery Navi 2000 coverage carries the same status line for that product.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use a battery with plug-in solar panels?
Not within the plug-in route. The specification does not apply to battery-integrated products at all, and the statutory definition separately excludes devices designed to import electricity from your installation to store for later supply. Compliant products must also warn against pairing with a battery storage system.
Are plug-in solar panels legal in the UK yet?
Compliant devices become lawful to sell and use in Great Britain from 27 August 2026. Battery-integrated devices are not within that route at any point.
Do plug-in solar kits store any electricity they generate?
A compliant plug-in solar device does not. It offsets what you are using at the time, which is why self-consumption matters more than headline wattage.
Is the EcoFlow STREAM legal in the UK?
As a plug-in device connected to a 13 A socket, no — it is battery-integrated and outside the definition. It can be installed by a conventional route. Our EcoFlow STREAM 5000 coverage goes into the detail, and the PowerStream is the generation-only sibling that is not caught by the battery exclusion.
Do plug-in solar kits work?
Within their limits, yes. An 800 VA plug-in solar system meaningfully offsets daytime baseload and takes a real bite out of energy bills over a year. It does not run a household and it will not carry you through an evening without storage. Rooftop solar remains the better answer for anyone who owns a suitable roof.
Can I add a battery to a compliant kit later?
Not and stay inside the route. A compliant device’s instructions must warn against pairing it with a battery energy storage system, so adding one afterwards puts the installation outside what the plug-in route contemplates even though the generation hardware is unchanged.
What happens in a power cut?
A compliant device disconnects. Anti-islanding protection exists so that a generating device does not keep energising a network that someone may be working on, so a plug-in kit is not a backup supply.
Can I claim the Smart Export Guarantee?
Generally not. SEG normally requires MCS certification, which most plug-in installations will not have.