Plug-in solar: the regulatory timeline

The timeline

What each document actually does

Four documents, four different jobs. Conflating them is the source of most of the confusion in circulation.

SI 2026/848 — the law. It amends the Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 and the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002. Its effect is narrow: it creates a route by which a standard BS 1363 plug intended for use with a plug-in solar microgenerator can be approved. Before it, such a plug could not be approved at all, because BS 1363 prohibits using plugs to connect generating devices to socket-outlets.

The Interim Product Specification — the requirements. It sets out what a compliant device must do and what the manufacturer must tell you. It is not itself legislation, but the approval route is tied to it.

The government response — the reasoning, and the caveats. This is the document people skip, and it is the one that contains the qualification on the per-circuit limit and the exclusion of battery-integrated products.

Engineering Recommendation G98 — the network rules. Published by the Energy Networks Association, not by government. It governs connecting small generation to the distribution network, and it is currently the binding constraint on how many devices you may have. See do I have to tell my network operator.

Version 1 and version 2

The specification exists in two versions and only one of them is current.

Version 1.0, June 2026 was the draft published for consultation. It is marked withdrawn.

Version 2.0, July 2026 is the final specification, published on 16 July 2026 with the government response and amended in the light of it.

This matters because the withdrawn draft circulated widely during June and July, and articles written in that window describe the draft. If a page, a product listing or a retailer’s compliance claim cites version 1, it is describing a document that no longer has effect. Ask which version any claim rests on — the same discipline we apply to MCS standards, where superseded versions stay online at plausible URLs.

What the framework borrowed

The government proposed using the German standard DIN VDE 0126-95 as a baseline, amended for the UK context, to support future international harmonisation. 87% of respondents to that question agreed.

Respondents supporting it cited Germany’s deployment experience and safety record, faster market access, and the fact that many products are already designed and tested to the German standard — reducing the need for UK-specific variants.

The UK-specific amendments respondents most often called for were BS 1363 plugs and fuses, ring final circuits, G98 requirements, RCD compatibility, earthing arrangements, and differences in UK housing stock. Ring finals in particular have no German equivalent, and they are why the circuit question is harder here than it is there.

What is still outstanding

The G98 amendment. The specification permits one inverter of up to 800 VA per household circuit. The government response makes that conditional on a corresponding amendment to G98, and states that until the amendment is made, G98’s existing limit of one device per household continues to apply. No date has been published. This is the difference between one device and, in a typical house, three or four.

Consumer guidance. The response commits to developing it alongside implementation.

Enduring standards. The interim specification is explicitly interim. The response says work “will begin on the development of longer-term standards to succeed the IPS.”

Battery-integrated products. Out of scope, with a commitment to continue developing evidence. Separate page.

Retail availability. A legal permission is not a product on a shelf. Manufacturers need to demonstrate compliance before placing devices on the market, and that work takes whatever time it takes.

What we are watching

We check this cluster on a fixed cadence, and these are the specific things that would change a page:

• publication of an amended G98 — changes the per-household limit
• any DESNZ consumer guidance — likely to become the reference document for installation questions we currently answer from the specification
• the first UK products certified to IPS v2, and how compliance is evidenced at the point of sale
• any enforcement activity on non-compliant imports, which was the concern respondents raised most often
• movement on batteries, or on the enduring standards

When any of these lands, this page gets the date and the affected pages get updated. If you spot something before we do, tell us.