UK to Allow "Plug in" Solar | Hacker News Reader

UK to Allow "Plug in" Solar

gov.uk

22 pointsedent15 comments

> low cost solar panels that families can buy at supermarkets and put on their balconies or outdoor space

Given the UK's typical solar exposure[0], and the quality of panels you can pickup at a supermarket, this has gotta be a net negative for a family right?

0: https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

The thing that people in the US forget about the UK (and indeed Europe in general) is that we're a lot further north than you think.

The UK's most southerly city, Truro, is still only at 50.26°N, but that's still further north than the border between the US and Canada.

I’m not entirely sure how your response maps to my comment, but indeed the airstream impacts on weather cause a much warmer climate in much of Europe compared to North America. This can confuse many folks when guessing the latitude of locations in each region. I remember how shocked I was when I was younger to learn Paris is nearly the same latitude as Vancouver, especially considering the climate difference.

It's more that there's comparatively little insolation here, unlike pretty much all of the US. If you go to one of the US cities that's incredibly far south like Seattle, you've got way more sunlight pretty much all year round.

Even down here at 57°N I'd need a solar farm the size of a football pitch to run a few lights in winter, and it would have to have the panels practically vertical because for the six hours or so the Sun is up the highest it ever gets is 9° above the horizon.

You're pretty okay for wind though, although if you're on the north-west coast it needs to be good for maybe 140-150mph sustained.

Your AI is acting up - Seattle is not incredibly far south, nor has abundant sunlight.. few minutes more than London, but if we're including cloud-vs-sunshine, less hours.

London would be "up" from Seattle (47.6->51.5) not "down here".

The 140mph sustained wind in Seattle is regularly featured in tourist guides, though. Fair play

Seattle is further south than most of the EU, and being down about the 45° point gets far more insolation than anywhere even five degrees north. It's just basic trig.

Consider that from where I'm sitting right now the border between Canada and Alaska is only like an hour's drive north for me, albeit 4500 miles west ;-)

I live in Canada (North of you) and get far more sunlight than you (~2350 hours/year vs London's 1640 or Edinburgh's 1430.. at 57.. are you just south of Inverness?)

Much further east these days but yeah, a bawhair south of Inverness.

It's still nearly a three hour drive though :-)

Used to live there-ish (Aberdeen).. it's beautiful countryside (but.. the fog)

> (but.. the fog)

Haar, it's called.

Cracking beaches all down that coast though especially a little south.

I go up to Aberdeen quite a bit, and as I'm coming over the brow of the hill on the AWPR as it passes Blackdog to the north and you get a view of the sea, I trip the dashcam to get a photo of my favourite wind turbines that really really really upset a certain elderly conservative guy.

30% less than Auckland, NZ. Not terrible, given how cheap and accessible balcony systems are.

The actual problem is how small such systems are. I can't imagine supplying more than 5-20% of your total use. Yes it's savings, but potential is far larger.

The insolation requred to get decent return is often overstated on the internet - you generally see over 1000kwh for a 1kw system over a year, only dropping to ~900 in scotland. California only really gets 40-50% more useful energy out. Sure, it's less, but often close enough that it can still make sense - and more dependant on local energy and PV system costs than anything else.

The idea that you need constant, overhead, wall-to-wall sunshine isn't really true for current systems. In fact, somewhere nearer the equator the effeciency drops significantly for PV systems (even if the total power output increases slightly) as the "extra" light isn't really useful.

> 1000kwh for a 1kw system over a year

That will net you a whole $100 a year, probably less in most places

Selling back to the grid, maybe. But if displacing your own use, 10p/kwh is a pipe dream in the UK, more like 25p+.

And my point is more that in that example price/kwh, the "best" location only returns $150 or so for that same system.

Sure, worth keeping in mind for payback calculations, but not really a "category change" - power prices vary more than that proportion between the countries involved. And certainly not the whole multiples a pure insolation chart might imply.

Good for the U.K.

Meanwhile in the U.S., public utilities are trying to delay balcony solar:

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/12/nx-s1-5737287/solar-panels-ut...

Perhaps ironically, Utah, a state with a strong republican legislature and governor, has legalized its use with unanimous approval. Vermont too, other state have bills pending.

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