What The Rise of Plug-In Solar Means for Your Utility

Matt (0:00)

What happens when thousands of small solar systems connect to the grid without the utility knowing about each one? What happens when households across the country lean into this build-your-own power system without knowing the full safety picture? Whether you call it plug-in PV, plug-in solar, or balcony solar, this trending tech is having a moment, with customers rushing to install, and utilities and regulators in the position to play catch-up. Before we get too ahead of our skis, Ken Boyce, Vice President of Engineering at UL, joins us to talk all things safety and visibility when it comes to plug-in solar.

All right, so Ken, balcony solar, it's truly making solar power more accessible these days. And as a case in point, we were doing some research ahead of this episode, found a whole community on Reddit called DIY Solar, gets tens of thousands of weekly visitors, and we came across a discussion from that community that started with the user asking, what am I missing with all the plug-in solar hype? And the discussion kind of went around, hey, it requires minimal setup, it can be self-installed by the average homeowner, you're avoiding labor costs, it gives you very fast payback periods, smaller sizes, less issues about net metering, all these kind of things we've heard about. With promises like those, we can see why it's a popular technology. But I guess my question to start off with you is, what problems has the rise of this technology created for the utility sector?

Ken Boyce (1:24)

Yeah, it's a really important question, Matt. I would say the promise of allowing people to participate in the energy transition and generate their own electrical power is very exciting. It really is great to enable people to make their own choices about how they want to generate and use electricity to a greater degree. I think the key aspect that we've been working on is to make sure it's done safely. It can be both. It really can be both. The technology is very promising, but there are certain potential hazards that could be manifested in the use of the technology.

It's really important to be proactive in addressing those so that people get the benefits of the new opportunity to generate their own electricity, but do it in a way that will be safe.

The work that we've been doing really focuses on two major aspects. One is the inherent features of the plug-in PV product, photovoltaic product itself, and then the second is how that PIPV product may interact with the existing wiring system, and both of them are really important from a safety standpoint.

Matt (2:37)

You mentioned the role you play. Can you spell that out a little bit more about what UL actually does as you're looking into these safety issues? How are you making this field safer for people?

Ken Boyce (2:46)

It's what we do. We're a very mission-driven company. Our mission is working for a safer world. And so we're really always thinking about how do we enable these innovations to be safely and sustainably and appropriately deployed. And so our work in PIPV products is really focused on looking at those electrical and fire hazards and mechanical hazards, and really thinking about what those would be in real-life use of the products and systems, and then thinking about ways that we can bring engineered solutions to mitigate those hazards from becoming real and causing an electrocution or causing a fire. The work that we did really started last year.

My team of our technical experts across a number of different technologies here, I brought them together and really asked them to do a deep dive on what the technology is today and what those potential hazards would be. That work culminated in a white paper that we published late last year that's available on our website, ul.com. And it really is trying to explain what these hazards look like in more accessible terms, right? There's obviously a very technical aspect to this, but it really is important. We wanted people who are interested in this topic to understand the results of our research, understand the findings, and really see what those potential safety hazards are.

And that work that was done on researching the products that were available in the market really led to the requirements that we published. They're called UL 3700, which are the safety requirements for these PIPV systems. And the idea there is it's a comprehensive set of construction and performance and working requirements that really drive safe products that can be used appropriately by the public with trust and confidence that they can get the results they want, but do it in a safe way.