Can you get SEG payments for plug-in solar?
Almost certainly not, and for two separate reasons — but the rule is discretionary rather than an outright bar, which is not how most pages describe it.
Almost certainly not. The Smart Export Guarantee has two gates, and a self-installed plug-in kit fails both: the installation and installer must be “suitably certified”, and the export must be measured by a meter capable of half-hourly readings with an export MPAN.
But the usual flat claim that plug-in kits “cannot get SEG” overstates it. Ofgem’s own wording is that where certification cannot be demonstrated, a licensee “is not obliged to offer payments under the SEG, but they can make payments if they wish”.
What the SEG is
The Smart Export Guarantee obliges larger electricity suppliers — SEG licensees — to offer a tariff paying small generators for electricity they export to the grid. It replaced the export element of the Feed-in Tariff. Ofgem describes the eligible technologies as solar PV, wind, micro-CHP, hydro and anaerobic digestion, with installations “up to 5MW (or up to 50kW for micro-CHP)” and located in Great Britain.
An 800 VA plug-in kit is comfortably inside the capacity limit and is a solar PV installation. Capacity is not the problem. The two conditions below are.
Gate one: certification
Ofgem’s guidance for generators sets three conditions on every application. To be an eligible installation, applicants must “demonstrate that the installation and/or installer are suitably certified”, “have an export meter” and “have an export meter point administration number (MPAN)” (paragraph 1.7).
On the first, for installations of the size we are discussing (paragraph 1.12):
For PV, wind and micro-CHP installations up to 50kW, applicants will be asked to demonstrate that their installation and installer are suitably certified.
The route almost everyone uses is MCS, and MCS states the requirement plainly from the consumer side:
Your system was installed by an MCS certified installer using certified products. When signing up to a SEG tariff they might ask for your MCS certificate to confirm this.
Note the shape of it. The certificate attaches to an installation carried out by a certified installer. A plug-in kit is, by design, a product the occupant installs — that is the entire premise of the Interim Product Specification and the reason the plug amendment was needed. There is no certified installer in the transaction to issue anything.
Ofgem does acknowledge that schemes other than MCS may be treated as equivalent, where the certification body is accredited to EN 45011 or EN ISO/IEC 17065:2012. We have not found such a scheme covering consumer-installed plug-in devices, but the door is not formally shut.
Gate two: metering
Even with certification, payment depends on measurement (paragraph 1.17):
In order to be eligible to receive payments under a SEG export tariff, the renewable export from an eligible installation must be metered. That meter must be capable of taking half-hourly measurements and have an export MPAN.
Ofgem also places it, at 1.18: “an export meter must be located at the point where the installation connects to the distribution network/the grid”, and directs you to your SEG licensee to obtain an export MPAN.
This is a second, independent obstacle. A plug-in device connects through a socket on a household final circuit, not at the grid connection point, and obtaining an export MPAN is a process that runs through the supplier rather than something the kit arrives with.
The framework is silent, deliberately or not
The 2026 plug-in solar documents do not address export payments at all. The government response records respondents raising it — asking for “reforms to Smart Export Guarantee arrangements” and “clearer arrangements for exported electricity” — but we did not find any commitment in reply. The specification itself does not mention export or SEG.
The practical effect is that nothing changed: the SEG conditions that applied before 27 August 2026 apply after it.
Whether any SEG licensee has chosen to exercise the discretion Ofgem describes and pay for export from a plug-in device. We found no supplier publicly offering it, but absence of evidence in a fast-moving retail market is not proof, and we would rather say so than assert a negative. If you have seen one, please tell us.
Whether Ofgem has issued a later revision of its generator guidance. The copy published at the link in our sources is dated December 2019 on its cover, covering an obligation that came into force on 1 January 2020. That is the document we quote, and we have archived it with a hash on our source documents page — but Ofgem’s landing page carries no version history, so we cannot rule out a newer revision existing elsewhere.
What this means for the maths
If you are working out whether a kit is worth buying, the export question is mostly a distraction. The value of a plug-in device is in reducing what you import — every unit it generates while you are using electricity is a unit you do not buy at your import rate. Units generated when nothing in the house is drawing power are, for now, unpaid.
That makes the useful calculation a self-consumption one, and it turns on your own consumption pattern rather than on a tariff table. We are building that calculator, and we will not publish savings figures here in the meantime.
The corollary is worth stating for anyone comparing options: a conventional roof-mounted system installed by an MCS certified installer does clear both gates. If you have a suitable roof and the capital, the export question is one of several reasons the comparison rarely favours plug-in.
Sources
- Smart Export Guarantee: Guidance for Generators (December 2019)
- Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) — Generators
- Smart Export Guarantee — Consumers
- Plug-in solar: Regulatory amendment and interim product specification — Government Response
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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