Will cheap, DIY solar reach American renters? In Germany, millions of people plug solar panels directly into wall outlets like any other appliance, but in the US, red tape makes it ludicrously costly. I chat with Cora Stryker of Bright Saver about how “balcony solar” (AKA “plug-in solar”) is booming in Europe and making its way to America, starting in Utah. We discuss the technical and safety issues, the regulatory hurdles, and the solar “gateway drug” effect.
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David Roberts
Alright everyone. Hello, this is Volts for November 26, 2025, “What is the deal with balcony solar?” I’m your host, David Roberts. In the late 2010s Germany established the technical and regulatory standards necessary to enable what it calls Balkonkraftwerk or balcony solar. Anyone in Germany, homeowner or renter, can simply buy a solar panel at their local hardware store, plug it into their wall and hang it off their balcony, or prop it up next to a tree in their backyard, or plop it on top of their shed or whatever.
A single panel won’t offset a whole home’s power, but it pays for itself in four or five years and provides a satisfaction that is apparently irresistible — as of the beginning of 2025, something like 4 million balcony solar kits have been installed in Germany. The Netherlands, Austria and Italy have seen similar booms.
“I am now completely hooked on how I can produce energy from the sun,” one previously skeptical German homeowner told The New York Times. “It has become like taking a drug.”
I ask you, listener: why should Europe get all the good drugs? Why can’t we have this in the US? Well, there are people trying, but the bureaucratic and technical barriers are substantial. To talk it all through with me, I have the perfect guest: Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a nonprofit devoted to enabling what it calls “plug-in solar” across the US.
There’s been a law passed to enable it in Utah, and there’s a push for legislation in several other states. However, there are other regulatory bodies that need to get involved, products that need to be manufactured, and so forth. We are going to get into all of it.
With no further ado, Cora Stryker, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Cora Stryker
Thank you so much for having me.
David Roberts
I will tell you, in the last year, maybe the last two years, this is the number one top request I get from listeners on what I should do a subject on. People, as I’m sure you’re aware, people’s imaginations are seized by this and people have tons of questions, and I’m very excited to talk it through. Just to start off with something that I found difficult to figure out, reading through all this material, this is just a normal solar panel, right?
Cora Stryker
Correct.
David Roberts
The panel itself, there is nothing special about the panel itself.
Cora Stryker
No.
David Roberts
What makes it special is there is a special inverter, a micro inverter that has all the intelligence and wizardry that makes this cooperate with a home system. You cannot, it is weird, I felt I was reading for hours before I finally confirmed this. You cannot just go buy any solar panel and do this. These are panels made for this purpose.
Cora Stryker
They’re standard panels, so you can get them almost anywhere. I talked to somebody who bought them used at her local hardware store. There’s nothing special about the panels, as you say. What’s special is the microinverter that connects the panels to a standard plug in your wall or to a battery, DC to DC, and then the DC is converted through the inverter to AC that your home can use.
David Roberts
Could I theoretically go buy a standard panel and then go buy the microinverter separately and then make it into a balcony solar panel?
Cora Stryker
Yeah, you could. That’s already happening in Utah. We’re already seeing DIYers do just that. There is a complete system available only in Utah. People are taking matters into their own hands right away. Don’t forget, this was a DIY movement in Germany for years before it became consecrated in law.
David Roberts
Were people programming their own little microinverters? Is that how people were doing it?
Cora Stryker
In Europe, people were just assembling these. It was a very niche thing. It was this tiny amount of folks compared to now. We’re looking at four years ago in the thousands of these balcony solar units in Europe. And now we’re up to, we think about 4 million. It’s a bit of an estimate. We can get the nuances there.
David Roberts
I should say that’s about 1 million registered official systems.
Cora Stryker
That’s right.
David Roberts
And up to 3 million people just doing it.
Cora Stryker
Yeah, we’re told by our German counterparts across the pond. That’s what they estimate. It’s fascinating what’s going on over there and it’s a little embarrassing that we’re so far behind.
David Roberts
But just to put a period on this point, what you’re buying when you buy a plug-in solar panel is just a normal everyday solar panel with a special micro inverter attached. And where these things are legal, you buy that as a package. You buy it in Germany as a package. You can buy it in Utah as a package. And if you are clever, apparently you can rig it yourself. That’s what we’re talking about — it’s just a solar panel with a special inverter that you can plug in at home without doing damage.
Let’s start then with Germany’s experience. As you say, Germans had been, at least, the niche DIY Germans had been doing this for a while. Tell us exactly what Germany legalized, specifically. What are the steps Germany took to make this possible and legal?
Cora Stryker
Sure. It happened in two parts. As I said, we’re looking at about a decade of experience in Germany with these systems. But again, it was tiny. What really happened? Two things, two pieces of legislation. One in 2019, essentially exempting these systems from traditional additional interconnection agreements. That is what Utah did earlier this year and what we are trying to replicate across the country. A lot’s happening even faster than we expected in our wildest dreams. As I like to say, that’s the speed of the climate crisis — that’s the speed we have to move at.
Germany had this two-part legislative process. The first was what we need to do first in this country, which is exempting these, creating a new class, a new legal class for these small systems under a certain wattage threshold. After that, we saw an uptick in Germany. The real explosion happened in 2024 when they passed protections for renters from landlords, essentially. If you go to Germany, you’re going to see mostly this adoption by renters, not exclusively. We do have homeowners that are doing this, but that’s why it’s called balcony solar.
David Roberts
And they all have balconies. If you have been to any European city, there are balconies all over the place.
Cora Stryker
Yes, they’re very lucky. I covet those when I go to Europe. But yes, that it’s this phenomenon. And, this is how we hit the tipping point in this country. Your neighbor has it, you want it, you see it. You touch it.
David Roberts
Just to be clear, the 2019 legislation made it technically legal to do this without messing with your utility. And the ‘22 law said landlords cannot prevent renters from doing this?
Cora Stryker
Yeah. In a broad brushstroke. That’s right.
David Roberts
And then it blew up and then it has taken off.
Cora Stryker
Wrong metaphor for this technology.
David Roberts
Yes. Setting aside Utah, let’s say you’re in the US and you wanted to do something like this and you’re not in Utah. Tell us the steps you would have to go through under current law to do this in the US.
Cora Stryker
Sure, that’s a much more complicated question than we thought when we started this thing back in January. The answer is there’s a manufacturer that sells in all 50 states in the United States right now. The way they do it, and the way we were doing it in our pilot in California, is there’s an extra piece of hardware. These are very simple systems, as you say. You’ve got your panel, you’ve got your microinverter plugged into the wall, but in order to fly under the radar of utilities — to be invisible to the utilities — this one system you could order in all 50 states has this extra hardware at the last step to prevent any excess electricity from flowing back to the grid, making it undetectable by utilities.
Now that, according to the letter of the law in every state we have become familiar with, it is still... it is against the law to not go through an interconnection agreement for that tiny system. As anyone who has installed rooftop solar knows, it is months of waiting.
David Roberts
Yes, I know. It’s a big enough pain in the ass when you’re getting a giant rooftop solar system out of it.
Cora Stryker
Can we use that language, David? Fantastic. Fantastic.
David Roberts
And you would, theoretically, by law, do the same interconnection steps for plugging a single panel into your wall that you are supposed to do to put a giant system on your roof, legally speaking?
Cora Stryker
Yes.
David Roberts
Okay. And let’s talk about this back feed prevention because I’m a little hazy on it. What you want to do, if you’re going to do this in the US and you’re not going to tell your utility, the way to be invisible to the utility is this. Your house is not feeding energy back into the system. That is how the utility would detect that you’re doing this. You can prevent that. That means you can only use the solar power that’s being generated when it’s being generated. If you’re not feeding it back into the grid, the energy that is generated that you’re not using at the exact moment it’s generated just gets wasted.
Cora Stryker
Yes. Unless you have a battery.
David Roberts
Unless you have. Of course. Unless you have a battery.
Cora Stryker
Yes.
David Roberts
And how can something — I’m going to betray my ignorance of basic household electronics here — but how could something you plug in a single outlet prevent the household more broadly from feeding energy into the grid? I’m not totally clear how that works.
Cora Stryker
It’s an ugly workaround. We installed these here in California. We had to have a licensed electrician come out and install this clunky piece of hardware at the breaker box.
David Roberts
Oh, at the breaker box, not where you’re plugging it in at your box.
Cora Stryker
I see, that’s right. Which is a real pain in the ass because you need to get that licensed electrician out. The hardware is expensive. It just about doubles the cost from what it is in Utah today and just about quadruples the cost from what it could be if we had German-style regulations.
David Roberts
Okay, to be clear, if you’re going to do this today in any state but Utah, A, you have to tell your utility and go through the whole utility interconnection process, which, as Volts listeners know, can take weeks, months, or months and expense, et cetera. And then two, you have to buy, along with your little panel and your little microinverter, a big piece of equipment that you attach to your electrical box that prevents the box from leaking any energy back into the grid.
Cora Stryker
That’s correct. These are sold as complete systems today. But yes, that’s right.
David Roberts
And suffice to say, add those two things together, it doesn’t make sense. Once you’ve added those, does it pencil out anywhere now other than...
Cora Stryker
It does. And I want to be careful here because we love rooftop solar, we love community solar, we love utilities. We’re not denigrating rooftop at all, but does it pencil out? Look, right now, today, even with this clunky workaround system, this plug-in system, it’s about $3 a watt, which is about our national average for rooftop. Of course there are local variabilities, but in a sense it pencils out if you’re in that group of people who want solar, but you just have no other options.
And I want to be clear here because strongly that if you, the individual consumer, have a choice between rooftop and these small plug-in systems, you should for sure get rooftop. They’re much bigger, they’re much more impactful. However, not everyone falls into that group. This is an entirely new group of Americans, many of whom have been on the sidelines wanting solar and just haven’t had an option. However, as I’m sure we’re going to get into, it really does add up. If we’re talking about these small systems at scale, it becomes significant, and that’s what we have to push for.
David Roberts
And let me just ask this. If you’ve got the back feed prevention, if you’ve got a piece of hardware that is preventing your house from leaking energy back up into the grid, then your system is invisible to the utility. If you’ve got that, why bother to tell the utility and go through the whole utility interconnection thing? Are there people out there just doing this?
Cora Stryker
There are. It’s happening. It will continue to happen.
David Roberts
And is anybody being. When you say it’s illegal, how illegal? What is, is anybody being punished? Do utilities care about this? Are they out looking for this? How big of a deal is it really?
Cora Stryker
David, here is how muddled it is and how we really need to clarify this gray area. We have, we are in touch with, half a dozen folks who have, we are in PG&E territory here in the San Francisco Bay area. We are in touch with folks who have called PG&E and described the system and been told by customer service representatives, no, you do not need an interconnection agreement, this is all behind the meter. We have had folks call and been told by other customer service representatives, oh, no, you do need an interconnection agreement.
This is the madness that we really need to get around to make this a real thing.
David Roberts
From PG&E’s perspective, if you’ve got the back feed prevention, what do they need the hassle for? They’re very busy. They’ve got a huge interconnection queue already. Do they really want to go through this big bureaucratic hassle with everybody who’s got a single panel? I don’t know how much their personal preferences play into this.
Cora Stryker
But we have the same question. We think in some senses, if we’re going for total exemption — and that is what we’re going for from interconnection — we’re also taking net metering off the table. In essence, the utilities are getting free electricity. We think they should be excited about this.
David Roberts
Yeah, I have a ton of questions about that. Germany legalized this. It took off. And I’m just going to guess that there have not been any substantial issues, nothing’s blown up. Nobody’s caused any blackouts. Have there been any setbacks or hiccups or anything that have dented the public impression of this?
Cora Stryker
In 10 years of adoption, there has been nothing significant reported.
David Roberts
Interesting, interesting. Okay, that brings us to the US here today. As you say, it’s crazy. Talk about Utah then. You found this Utah Republican lawmaker and got in his ear. Tell us what happened in Utah.
Cora Stryker
Sure. He initiated the process. We came in toward the beginning, but he read an article in the New York Times a little over a year ago.
David Roberts
Tell us his name real quick.
Cora Stryker
His name is Raymond Ward. Representative Raymond Ward.
David Roberts
Raymond Ward of Utah, otherwise known as a hero for solar.
Cora Stryker
Took the words out of my mouth. Yeah, we call him our hero. I introduced him at a talk recently as our hero, and he blushed a little bit. Perhaps we should not use that word.
David Roberts
All right, I’ll tone it down.
Cora Stryker
He’s really a visionary. He saw what was happening in Germany and thought to himself, oh, great, I’ll get one. Then he discovered quickly, “ Oh, I can’t.” He dug in. We joined up with him, and quickly we figured out why there are these regulatory restrictions that we need to remove. He said, “I’m a lawmaker, I can do this.” Wait a minute, wait a minute. We wrote the bill with him. It was a bit of a negotiation. Utilities were brought to the table from the very beginning.
And they had a couple of requests.
David Roberts
Curious what the big utilities think about this. What did they say when you approached them?
Cora Stryker
Utah has one of the lowest solar penetration rates in the nation.
David Roberts
That’s crazy.
Cora Stryker
We don’t have these traditional battle lines drawn. We do, we’re going to get to this. But we have five states that have already announced introducing legislation. We have another five that are waiting in the wings, waiting for their announcements. In Utah, we brought the utilities to the table early, and there were some things that they added to the bill. They added release of liability. This is not a new technology. It’s been in Europe for a decade, but it’s new here. The utilities wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t be held liable for...
David Roberts
Any release of utility liability?
Cora Stryker
That’s right. And a bit to our surprise, they weren’t terribly concerned about this. I think they saw it as a little fly buzzing around. Yeah, it’s niche. It’s tiny amounts of electricity that could theoretically be backfed to the grid. But if we’re looking at the average baseload of an American home, most of, if not all of that electricity generated, even without that backfeed prevention, will be consumed on the spot just by your refrigerator.
David Roberts
I think from a utilities perspective, even if this catches on in Utah and gets reasonably big in Utah, the amounts of energy that might be coming into the grid collectively are just, they’re not huge. They’re not, there’s just no reason for the utility to be scared that this is going to be destabilizing on any scale. Is there?
Cora Stryker
That’s right. We don’t think so. There are parts of the grid and parts of some grids in the United States that are at or near saturation. That is something we need to bear in mind and we can get to legislative approaches that we think are reasonable there. We think in almost every area, yes, we’re talking about such tiny amounts of back feed that we really are not going to be looking at grid instability issues. Even in those areas where we’re at or near saturation, there’s a bit of a debate and that’s, we’re the only game in town — in the sense that we’re the plug-in solar people. People keep coming to us with these questions.
One of the things that we’re working on as we speak is we’ve got, I call it my dream team of technical safety experts who are putting together a definitive guide on safety from two levels. Household safety, line worker safety, and also grid stability safety. We’re working with some experts in the field to produce that. It should be out in the next weeks, possibly months.
David Roberts
Okay, Utah, just in terms of what Utah did, they shielded the utilities from liability. They exempted these systems from the interconnection requirement. What is the cutoff size — how big?
Cora Stryker
Utah chose 1,200 watts.
David Roberts
1,200 watts. Give us a sense. Is that a panel, two panels? What is the cap there?
Cora Stryker
We’re talking about 400 watt panels. We’re talking about three of them. The way the Utah law is written, it’s a little ambiguous. Are we talking about generation capacity? The language is output, but that can be interpreted in a number of ways.
David Roberts
You think roughly a Utah homeowner could hook up three panels and still not have to do an interconnection?
Cora Stryker
Yeah, it’s happening today.
David Roberts
And what else was there? What other pieces were important in the legislation? Obviously, the interconnection thing is the big thing. But what is it? Were there other important pieces in Utah?
Cora Stryker
The really crucial part is it enabled self-installation and the secret sauce of what has made this take off in Germany are a couple things. One is just the ease of installation. You can go to IKEA, pick one of these up, bring it home, plug it in, you are done.
David Roberts
You literally just plug it in.
Cora Stryker
There is literally plug it in.
David Roberts
There is barely anything that even qualifies as installation. Youre literally just plugging it in.
Cora Stryker
Oh yeah, it’s dummy-proof.
David Roberts
And they had to explicitly say in Germany, this does not require an electrician. Do you have to make that explicit?
Cora Stryker
I’d have to look at the law again. I don’t believe they made that explicit. But when you exempt from interconnection and explicitly permit self-installation, it implies that.
David Roberts
Utah homeowners can do the same thing now that Germans can do.
Cora Stryker
That’s right. And they are doing it.
David Roberts
And this is Home Depot. Who’s, who’s, where do you get these things if you’re in Utah?
Cora Stryker
In Utah, I just got someone to forward me an email. Costco is selling them.
David Roberts
Nice. You knew they were going to get into it. You just knew it.
Cora Stryker
Listen, every retailer wants to get into this. It is a no-brainer thing. It is a huge market. They just see one state — Utah — where they are not going to run into this regulatory quagmire.
David Roberts
We’ve got a model now, Utah. From what I’m hearing from you, and from what I’m reading, it’s a good model. They did it right. They did it the way you want them to. More or less. Yes?
Cora Stryker
Yes.
David Roberts
And now you have this white paper out that tries to model what will happen. Because right now it is just Utah, which is a relatively small market, all things considered. You have this white paper analyzing what would happen if we pass similar reforms in five states.
Cora Stryker
Yes.
David Roberts
And then you’ve got some pretty eye-popping results that would come from that. But to begin with, why five states? Why is that the threshold?
Cora Stryker
Five is not arbitrary. We have talked to all the major manufacturers that are selling in Europe right now.
David Roberts
And can I cut in on the manufacturing? Are these, the people who manufacture this, are these, I’m guessing, just manufacturers of solar panels and this is one of their products? This doesn’t seem specialized enough that you would get a company devoted to this.
Cora Stryker
The new one? No, no, no. These are the big ones. Five states is not arbitrary. We have spoken to all the major manufacturers, and they tell us they need to see a bigger market before they’re really going to invest in R&D and everything it would take to get in here. They’re in Germany right now. They tell us about five states, small states. But listen, we have some pretty big fish on the table already, and we have even more we know are in the pipeline in terms of who’s going to introduce legislation. We’ve got Pennsylvania, we’ve got New York. It wouldn’t be five if we got one of these big fish.
David Roberts
Oh, I see. Five small states. Or maybe New York and...
Cora Stryker
One or two.
David Roberts
Two small states?
Cora Stryker
That’s right. It’s all about the TAM. They need to see enough to invest and come here.
David Roberts
And theyve told you if you get that big a market together, well start coming in earnest. Stocking, marketing, selling here in the US.
Cora Stryker
Yes, that’s what they tell us. And five is the floor, not the ceiling. The more places, of course, the more manufacturers will come in. That’s really what we need to happen. We need multiple manufacturers here. We need competition to drive down prices.
David Roberts
The headline here, which I feel should be put on a flag somewhere, is “All you need is for this to become legal.” None of this needs any subsidy.
Cora Stryker
That’s right.
David Roberts
Or tax credit or incentive or et cetera, et cetera. You can just sell solar panels at market rates and this will take off on its own. Is that your...
Cora Stryker
Yeah, absolutely. I feel pretty psyched about that as a clean energy advocate person. It looks like it doesn’t need subsidies. To me, we really reached this tipping point for clean energy in which it truly is or could be the cheapest option for the consumer with the right regulatory framework.
David Roberts
Legendarily, they are building fences out of it. And in Germany, the panels are so cheap in Germany that they are just...
Cora Stryker
I love that.
David Roberts
Using it as building material.
Cora Stryker
I know that’s where we’re headed, David. That is the frontier. Every new construction has PV materials that it’s being built from.
David Roberts
You project in your modeling that if five states legalize this and manufacturers come in, the costs will fall. The cost of plug-in solar will fall from what to what?
Cora Stryker
It’s a stepwise function. We start where we are today, which is around $3 a watt, generally on par with rooftop. Now, this is for the workaround system.
David Roberts
And this is the whole system plus the interconnection, plus the electrician to install the back feed — that whole package?
Cora Stryker
Not including the interconnection fees. This would be the full system, including the extra piece of hardware to prevent that back feed to the grid. That is the one installed at the breaker box. In order to get in the breaker box, you need a licensed electrician. This is the cost of that. We know this cost because we have done this in our pilot in California. This includes the cost of the electrician and the cost of the more complex system.
David Roberts
Got it. About $3 a watt now.
Cora Stryker
About $3 a watt, depending a little bit on labor costs for the electrician where you live. On par with national averages for rooftops. The day after, even one state — say New York, say Vermont — the day after that legislation is signed into law, the system, the simple system that’s available only in Utah will come to that state. That makes it permissible. That’s where, if you look at the takeaway graph in our white paper, that’s where you get the big drop.
David Roberts
Wait, now I’m confused. Why is the Utah system much cheaper? Is it the lack of the backfeed thing?
Cora Stryker
That’s right. The backfeed thing, plus the cost of the electrician, we factor that in.
David Roberts
Okay, the day you exempt these systems from the need for a utility interconnection and you exempt them from the need for back feed protection, those two pieces right there, that cuts the cost roughly in half?
Cora Stryker
Because a different system at a stroke. Even in one state, we don’t need to hit five states for that to be true. Because the system already exists. It’s already in Utah. I’ve gone on their website. I would love to have one shipped to me here in the San Francisco Bay area. They will not ship it to me. I’d have to get it shipped to Salt Lake City, drive over, go on a road trip, bring it back, which, believe me, I know some people are doing. But yeah, it’ll be there immediately, overnight, the minute it’s signed into law.
David Roberts
Okay, that gets you to a buck fifty. Youre talking about getting to 50 cents a watt. That comes through what, just competition?
Cora Stryker
Yeah, competition. Scale effects. We really use as our key the historical trends. We look at Wright’s law. The components continue to fall every year, the component costs. We know that once we have multiple manufacturers into the game that it will fall in cost quickly. By the way, it sucks for them. It is a race to the bottom in Germany. This is dirt cheap. They are not making great margins. Yeah, but it is great for us, it is great for consumers, sucks for the manufacturers.
David Roberts
You’re in part just talking about riding along on the learning curve that solar panels are already on.
Cora Stryker
Yes, almost.
David Roberts
And the system like this is what I’m trying to get at is how much, so much efficiencies have already been squeezed out of the panel itself. I’m wondering what is the room for further advance at the system level? How complex is the system level here?
Cora Stryker
We thought about that a lot in our white paper. We agree, we don’t think we’ll continue. Historically, we’ve seen about a two-year doubling rate for solar panels and about a 20% learning rate globally over the last decades. We think that’s probably not going to continue. We do believe the price will continue to go down, maybe not at that rate. The thing that we really need to consider is that these panels are so cheap that these balcony solar systems, a lot of the cost is the mount, for instance. And those do not go down at the same learning rates that we see PV modules go down. We’re not expecting a 20% learning rate. We estimate in our paper about 14.
David Roberts
In the microinverter, how, is that pretty straightforward too? Probably not a ton of room there to squeeze out efficiencies or cost drops. I’m guessing that electronics are pretty simple, but I say that from a position of total ignorance.
Cora Stryker
Not total, a lot, David. Yeah, same thing. We see historically a more modest learning rate for inverters. We don’t expect 20% two-year doubling time. We expect a little more in models than that got.
David Roberts
Then let’s translate quickly the per watt costs, which is what we’re talking about, to payback periods because it seems the people who write about this are obsessed with payback periods. Although I have never been convinced that individual consumers care that much. At the current cost pre-legislative reform, the payback period is what it’s got to be — 8 to 10 years now-ish?
Cora Stryker
It depends where you are, of course; there are wild variations in electricity prices.
David Roberts
Depends on insolation and the amount of sunlight available.
Cora Stryker
Absolutely.
David Roberts
But the payback time is pretty long now and it is going to get cut substantially. If you pass the legislative reform, cut the cost in half there, you cut the payback time to, you guys are estimating around four years?
Around.
And then you estimate nationally by 2032, around three years. That’s fast — that’s faster than rooftop solar. That seems almost fast enough that it almost doesn’t count as a payback period. That seems like that’s a threshold that’s going to trigger a lot of buying.
Cora Stryker
We think so. And we think it’s a threshold not just for solar or plug-in solar, it’s a threshold for the clean energy movement at large. When we hit that point where it’s not a climate-driven choice, it’s just straight economics, it’s a straight rational consumer model. We think that we’re just going to see this take off. Why shouldn’t we? The cost of the energy itself is incredibly, incredibly low. Why shouldn’t consumers benefit from those rock-bottom prices of the equipment?
David Roberts
And I really think, and this is just me editorializing, that the experience of Germany supports this, that there is a backyard dad — nerd factor here. That doesn’t really kick in with rooftop solar because that’s mostly professionals doing that. You get to play with the screen afterwards and see how much power is coming in and going out. That gives you some geeky satisfaction. This is genuine DIY. Dad goes to Home Depot and he’s figuring out where in his backyard to put it.
There’s a customer geeky satisfaction element here that I think is a bit of an X factor.
Cora Stryker
I’m not a backyard dad. I’m not quite sure, but I take your word for it.
David Roberts
Just suburban’s dad, they love fiddling around there, they love fiddling around and this is something to fiddle around with.
Cora Stryker
It becomes an IKEA project. IKEA’s literally selling these in Germany.
David Roberts
Exactly. Your projection in this paper is that by 2035, 24 million households involving 60 million people, one in six Americans, will have one of these things in their home.
Cora Stryker
We do.
David Roberts
And that’s just you’re making that projection based on cost, demand, Germany’s example, etc.
Cora Stryker
All of the above.
David Roberts
That’s amazing. That would be truly amazing. And really, I think part of this is, and this is also an X factor that you can’t really quantify or predict. But I feel part of this is just making people familiar with this stuff, making this stuff seem familiar and normal and around you. I think that’s going to do something psychologically for clean energy. It has in Germany already, oh, 100%. The big barriers in the US right now, as I read it, are twofold.
One is UL certification, which stands for Underwriters Laboratory.
Cora Stryker
Yes, yes, yes.
David Roberts
They’re the regulatory body that stamps — certifies consumer goods as safe. And as I understand it, they dont currently have a certification for this product. What is going on there?
Cora Stryker
Not exactly. It’s in Utah. And the way the Utah law is written: Is UL certified now? It doesn’t specify. Are we talking about component-level certification, which we already have? We have 1741 for the inverters and certification for the panels as well. What we’re talking about is a third UL certification, which is for the system end to end. The manufacturer that’s in Utah interprets it as component-level UL certification because it’s left open in the legislature.
David Roberts
It’s Utah. Presumably Utah legislatures are informed about this and they are okay with that too.
Cora Stryker
That’s a legislative strategy question. We feel strongly that we have to write legislation so as not to constrain technological development as it may unfold. Because if we legislate everything according to the technology that is available today, we have to go back to the past. It is just not a good recipe for free market dynamics.
David Roberts
Let me ask you this. Who, the Utah manufacturers say the pieces of these systems are individually UL certified?
Cora Stryker
That’s right.
David Roberts
There’s no need for this third UL certification for the whole system. And that’s working in Utah. They’re doing it. Who adjudicates that question ultimately? Who decides? Is it the UL board that makes a decision? Do they have any enforcement power? How are those questions settled?
Cora Stryker
Are you saying someone could challenge Utah’s law in court?
David Roberts
And who would? If someone wanted to say there’s no UL certification for the system and I want to use that to challenge, I’m confused who they would challenge and before what body. Is it the UL? Is it the UL council? Where?
Cora Stryker
I don’t know.
David Roberts
Does anyone know?
Cora Stryker
No, I don’t think there is any gatekeeper there.
David Roberts
If Utah decides to do it, nobody can come in and stop them?
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If Utah decides to do it, nobody can come in and stop them to our knowledge?
Cora Stryker
Probably a federal law could stop them, but...
David Roberts
Sure. You don’t see this UL certification, this lack of UL certification for the system level, as a barrier?
Cora Stryker
Not currently. If at the levels of adoption that we project potentially. UL is working right now on that third certification. We expected them to be out with it by now. It has gotten delayed.
David Roberts
They are doing it?
Cora Stryker
They are doing it. They’ve been working on it for years and we’re just waiting for them to release it. Yes, we feel it should not be a hindrance in the meantime. We feel that all the major safety concerns are addressed by this. I was talking to Daniel Gerber yesterday. He is authoring our safety memo FAQ and this is his wheelhouse. He wrote the definitive paper on barriers to plug-in solar and he feels that at a certain threshold he thinks the Utah one is a good one — 12, 1200 watts.
We don’t need to worry about these major safety considerations because we’re talking about such small amounts of energy. Now if UL comes out with different guidance, particularly for different use cases, the market will follow that. We just don’t see it as something that should be in legislation constraining technological development.
David Roberts
Got it. And you don’t have any visibility into that, do you? I assume this is some council in a closed room somewhere doing arcane rites?
Cora Stryker
We have heard from them in the last couple weeks that they are going to be releasing guidance soon. What does the word soon mean? It is up to debate, but we are waiting for it and I think that when that comes out there will be clarity. One of the hindrances, if we are talking about barriers, is not just legal gray area, but certification gray area. We are excited for that to become clarified by UL quite soon.
David Roberts
There’s no chance of them saying no or that nothing is going to come out of that. That’s going to be a huge blocker.
Cora Stryker
We don’t know what they’re going to say. We don’t think so.
David Roberts
Knock on wood.
Cora Stryker
I guess we don’t think so. And if there is, there is always product development which can respond to it.
David Roberts
The second thing I always hear cited as a barrier is National Electric Code. Apparently there is a National Electric Code and it certifies various things, says various things are okay, and does not have anything in it that allows for the installation of plug-in solar. What’s the deal there? Is that a serious problem?
Cora Stryker
Again there’s debate. The way our technical team thinks about it, and we’ll have this memo released soon, NEC governs the wiring of the house that you plug this thing into. But this thing is an appliance and in the end it is governed by consumer product safety certifications like UL. There are others, but UL is the gold standard, so we see them as two separate issues now. That’s because the Utah legislation that we’re trying to replicate has total exemption and self installation.
For a system that has to be installed by a professional electrician, yes, NEC would be relevant there. We’re not changing the wiring of the house.
David Roberts
If you’re just plugging an appliance in, you’re by definition not touching the wiring of the house.
Cora Stryker
Think of a hairdryer.
David Roberts
Yeah, exactly. This gets to one of the concerns, one of the physical safety concerns around this, which is called breaker masking. Every circuit, as people know, has a circuit breaker, and if a circuit gets overloaded, the circuit breaker automatically trips off. It’s a physical — currently still literally a physical — spring that clicks and the circuit goes off. One of the concerns here is if you’re feeding energy back into the circuit in addition to the energy coming the other way through the circuit, you’re going to confuse the circuit, and it might not recognize an overload when it’s happening. This is called breaker masking. The way they solve this in Germany apparently is just the balcony solar are producing at such a low level that it’s not a threat. Is there any reason for us to dig into that any further or do you. Is that a solved problem?
Cora Stryker
This is why we have to set the maximum output. This...
David Roberts
Right.
Cora Stryker
Yes, that is how Germany solves it. And pretty impeccable safety record there.
David Roberts
And their maximum output currently is 800 watts. Yes, currently, which is according to The New York Times, half the amount used by a hairdryer.
Cora Stryker
Right.
David Roberts
Really benign. Is it 800 watts in Utah too?
Cora Stryker
No, it’s 1200 watts in Utah.
David Roberts
1,200, but we still think that is not even a full hairdryer. The 1,200 watts measures the amount of power going into the home system from the solar panel. That is the limit.
Cora Stryker
That’s right.
David Roberts
We have a decade of experience with 800 watt output, but zero problems. 1,200 is probably benign as well. The only other safety thing I was going to cite, and if you think this is too trivial to cover, please say. There is something in the US — we lack a ground fault circuit interrupter, a GFCI, all sorts of nerdy electricity stuff we’re getting into here. Is this anything that is a breaker or a problem or is this just a matter of the producer? The manufacturer is going to start making these?
Cora Stryker
Yeah, the manufacturer will have to have come out with a warning. For instance, going back to the hair dryer, the manufacturer’s instructions say you have to plug that into a GFCI. I have made that mistake a couple times. We believe the manufacturer’s instructions, if followed, will circumvent these safety concerns. But that comes down to the consumer certification, the UL, or whichever nationally recognized certification body comes out with guidance on this. We understand why people ask these questions and want clarity, but our technical team doesn’t see a huge risk there either at these low wattages.
David Roberts
A ground fault circuit interrupter is something that is, in some outlets, just a part of the outlet.
Cora Stryker
If you go to your bathroom, you’ll see this little red button on the outlet. That’s what it is. When it trips, which it might, you can reset it by pushing that little button manually.
David Roberts
Got it. Okay, Utah’s in the bag. Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire. Those four at least have announced plans to do a bill. Are there other states that are in other various state stages of...
Cora Stryker
Oh, yes, there are. One of the lucky things about being the only game in town. Everyone comes to us. We have insight into. There are 31 states on the...
David Roberts
31.
Cora Stryker
31. Nope. One just came online yesterday, 32.
Hold the phone.
David Roberts
Hold the phone.
Cora Stryker
It’s 32 and counting. Yes...
David Roberts
It’s a Republican who did it in Utah. Does anyone oppose that? Is there a faction or a movement or is there any organized opposition to this? And if so, why? Why would, I’m trying to figure out who might oppose it and why, but I’m not coming up with anything.
Cora Stryker
I don’t want to give any groups any ideas, David.
David Roberts
I can’t think of a reason not to.
Cora Stryker
That’s what we think. Most of the questions are raised, and they’re mostly questions you’re raising. It’s all around, hey, this is a new technology. I don’t have it. My neighbor doesn’t have it. Tell me about what the risks are. I was going to say, yes, it was a Republican who did this in Utah. We think that in some sense, the time is absolutely right for us as a nation. Things are divisive politically and we really see this as — we think that this has caught on quickly because it really does appeal to many of our values across the political spectrum.
It’s really deregulation or regulatory reform slimming down its climate self-reliance, et cetera, et cetera.
David Roberts
And your rooftop solar gets at that a little bit. But I said before, once you’re really putting your panel and put it where you want, plug it in where you want. That’s real prepper-like crack. That’s prepper-crack right there. You’re definitely going to get that crowd involved.
Cora Stryker
Yes, and it’s not true prepper, because we’re not talking about off-grid systems, we’re not talking about being in, you’re not in the woods. You’re in a typical urban suburban home that is connected to the grid.
David Roberts
In Germany, you are allowed to feed a little bit of energy back into the grid from these systems. You don’t have to have the back feed thing. Now that’s true in Utah, yes, too. But in other places they’re still requiring it. I guess I’m just wondering about the physics. Is it just a matter of the amount of power that you might be feeding back into the grid is so small that it doesn’t matter? Is that why utilities are okay with it?
Cora Stryker
We need to test this state to state. In Utah, yes, they were okay with it. We don’t know how anomalous that negotiation was. That is a big question we have and we are working with experts. So far everyone we’ve talked to about grid level dynamics has said these are such small amounts of electricity, such small systems, it really can’t create any load predictability issues.
David Roberts
I see. One of my questions was, what if some rogue, speaking of handy suburban dads or whatever, what if some rogue person strings together 10 of these things and plugs them in the wall? But that, I guess, is where you get to your cap — your cap on the amount of wattage.
Cora Stryker
That’s right.
David Roberts
All these states are looking into passing legislation. Your organization has three recommendations for what to do in state legislation. You want to run through those three real quick. Utah did all three.
Cora Stryker
Yeah, Utah did do all three and we think that is the right place to start. It is defining these small PV systems as a new legal category and saying, “Hey, these systems are exempt from traditional interconnection agreements designed for rooftop systems five to 20 times as large.”
David Roberts
And you think 1200 watts works, is good. Do you have any, would you like to push that higher?
Cora Stryker
I think that there is some debate about what exactly is the limit. But no safety expert we have talked to has said that there is an issue with 1200. They think that’s pretty conservative.
David Roberts
First thing, define these as a separate product and then, two, exempt them from interconnection requirements.
Cora Stryker
That’s right, and then with that comes the ability to self-install, which is key — crucial. This is going to stay super niche. This is going to be much more expensive if we don’t allow that. In Utah at least, the utilities asked for release of liability. We anticipate, state to state, a lot of utilities will ask for that as well.
David Roberts
And then it says that you are asking that states exempt these small systems from net metering. I wonder what that means. The amount they’re feeding back into the grid as discussed is relatively trivial. Is the idea that the utilities just don’t want to have to measure and pay for it — is that why they want these exempt?
Cora Stryker
If you don’t have interconnection, you don’t have net metering.
David Roberts
It just comes along.
Cora Stryker
Yeah, it’s not. The Utah law does say net metering specifically but in a way it’s redundant.
David Roberts
I see, I see. If you haven’t done the interconnection thing with the utility, they’re not measuring however much you feedback to the grid regardless. I just have a couple of random final questions, things that were on my mind. One is, and I think probably this is on a lot of listeners’ minds and maybe should have gotten to it earlier, but how much savings is this? If I get an average household of, say, three people in my apartment—parents and a kid, average three person—and I get one panel, am I offsetting 5% of my demand? 50%, 75%? What are the magnitudes here?
Cora Stryker
Roughly the best data we have is from Germany where we have many users. There the average system is around 800 watts. The data there shows that if it is oriented correctly then we have about 15 to 20% offset. We are not talking about systems that will cover your entire energy demand, which is why it is grid-tied. We are not talking about systems that will keep you going if you are in the middle of the woods.
David Roberts
This is a reduction of your bill.
Cora Stryker
That’s right.
David Roberts
Of course the amount of power you get out of it is going to depend on the sunniness of your atmosphere. Your payback time is going to depend also on your rates, what utility area you’re in, et cetera, et cetera. But nowhere and in no context is this “I’m going off grid” type of stuff. This is all this is, this is just an extra...
Cora Stryker
There are systems that you can take off grid and do this with. They have been around for a long time. We’re talking specifically about a grid-tied system for those of us who live in civilization. Is that an offensive way to put it? Those of us who live in typical apartments, houses, most of us.
David Roberts
Us people in apartments have been excluded from much of this fun stuff. It is.
Cora Stryker
Yeah, absolutely. That’s why we’re doing this.
David Roberts
They deserve something. Now I guess for a given household, whether they want a battery, whether they want storage, is a separate calculation from this. But I’m wondering in terms of the marketing and the public impression of all this, is anyone trying to package batteries with this or tie this to storage somehow?
Cora Stryker
Yeah, absolutely. The system in Utah that I’ve mentioned comes with or without a battery. The analysis we do in the white paper is for batteryless systems. However, we expect more people to adopt battery usage. There are many benefits. Your utilization goes up, you have resilience. There are a million reasons to do it that way, but we see this as the fundamental step towards resilience for the millions of Americans who have no other options.
David Roberts
And that would, it seems to me from the utilities perspective, the battery would have the effect of preventing back feed because it is just going to absorb all your extra. Insofar as there are any safety concerns about this, that would do the same thing more or less, wouldn’t it?
Cora Stryker
Theoretically. Let’s use Utah as the example. Theoretically, even if you have one of the systems with a battery, you could still backfeed a little bit, fill it up, and then backfeed more. There are ways to prevent that or to limit that, or to set the amount that you want, but we think, again, those things should not be legislated.
David Roberts
And when you say battery or no battery, are the manufacturers into degrading batteries physically in some way, or do you just buy it with a battery next to it?
Cora Stryker
The one in Utah, you can buy it with or without, and it is a separate piece of hardware, so you would just add it to a system or not add it.
David Roberts
But theoretically, manufacturers could figure out fun ways of packaging these things together. If I have a house where I do have rooftop solar already, and I have an interconnection agreement, et cetera, and I bring one of these and plug it in. It doesn’t change...
Cora Stryker
It does.
David Roberts
It doesn’t really change anything, does it?
Cora Stryker
No, it does, it does in the sense. We’re doing this in California right now, as we speak. If you have a net metering agreement, then you can attach one of these and have it fall under that same net metering agreement, whether it’s NEM1, NEM2, NEM3, under a certain threshold. In California that’s 1 kilowatt. You can buy right now, through us or another manufacturer, a system that’s up to 1 kilowatt and plug it in, and it will be considered part of your net metering expansion.
David Roberts
I see.
Cora Stryker
You do not need a new interconnection agreement.
David Roberts
Interesting. And you could have a system that can island. Because you can’t just have a plugin thing that can island. But these could be part of an islandable system, theoretically.
Cora Stryker
If the rooftop is set up that way.
David Roberts
But the point is, if you have rooftop and you have all the agreements and everything, you can slipstream one of these in under as an adjunct part of the rooftop system?
Cora Stryker
Let me correct myself because the plugin system is separate. It has its own inverter, which is UL 1741. That has anti-islanding capability. As it stands, that’s why you don’t need, for instance, a shutoff switch with these systems, because it’s already built into the inverter. No, you can’t have islanding from these systems in any case, as long as the inverter is UL 1741.
David Roberts
Interesting stuff. Why have you guys decided? Why are you selling product? Why are you selling these things? What’s going on there?
Cora Stryker
When we started Bright Saver, we did not imagine getting into legislation. We imagined ourselves. We started with the vision of “hey, there’s a huge group of Americans, low to moderate income renters who just have no options for on-site residential solar.” We started with this vision of “hey, this is happening in Europe, why can’t it happen here?” We thought the barriers were a little different when we started this thing. We imagined ourselves helping finance these units for folks who do not have access to great financing. But when we started encountering the regulatory barriers, we started learning that if we don’t remove these barriers with legislation, it’ll be constrained and expensive.
Why are we doing this expansion? We are primarily doing it because it is fully legal. There is no question, no gray area even here in Northern California where we are installing these things right now, soon Southern California too. We just wanted to make sure that we were within the bounds. And why do we sell them? We sell them because it is part of our theory of change. We do not think that we will get widespread adoption unless you can see them. Your neighbor has one. Pictures from Germany are good, but it is better to see folks...
David Roberts
I do love them.
Cora Stryker
They’re lovely.
David Roberts
I do love them.
Cora Stryker
That’s why we sell product. But truly, we are nonprofit. We see this as a way to generate revenue to fund our other mission-driven work.
David Roberts
I see. And I’m guessing once this is legal in whatever 10 states or 20 and producers and manufacturers flood in, you’re probably going to get out of that business. You’re not going to get in a competition race with —
Cora Stryker
Listen, my job is to put myself out of a job. We want to get to that tipping point where we don’t need a nonprofit driving this. This is a market-driven thing and I think we will get out. There is no way for a company like ours or an organization like ours with American overhead to be able to compete. And we don’t want to. We’re here to make change. We’re here to start a movement.
David Roberts
If I’m in Utah and I don’t need an interconnection and I don’t need an electrician and I’m just going to buy a system that I can literally plug in myself. How much is the system? Just tag price?
Cora Stryker
The costs keep going down. I was on the call with a legislator yesterday and we looked up this, the cost now in Utah for an 800 watt system without a battery, it’s around a thousand dollars.
David Roberts
Wow, that’s...
Cora Stryker
It’s quite cheap.
David Roberts
That’s a laptop or...
Cora Stryker
Yeah, it’s accessible to a different group of people based on cost alone, let alone, are you a renter, a homeowner, et cetera.
David Roberts
A thousand bucks and you see that only going down over time.
Cora Stryker
Oh for sure. That look, this is a very immature market in the United States. This one manufacturer that’s, probably another one soon.
David Roberts
Right now I’m assuming because this market is relatively small, they’re just using panels from elsewhere. But I’ve been wondering if this becomes a truly robust market, are they going to start making panels of different sizes and different shapes to fit into the home? Because right now all the pictures I see are just the very standard rooftop panels set in different places, but you could imagine different kinds of panels.
Cora Stryker
Sure, and in Germany we have that. We piloted a system like the one you’re talking about. It was a very low wattage, 200 watt system and it was a flexible panel and it was smaller. It could be zip tied to a balcony. We were hoping to suction cup it to the inside of a south-facing window. Turned out we couldn’t quite make that work with the way. But listen, I was at an installation for a delightful 80-something-year-old woman who lifted the panel herself and oriented it. It was so lovely.
Yes, we imagine that there is no limit to the use cases that can come out of this once a viable market exists.
David Roberts
Wild. What a fun time. What a fun time to see things unfolding. By way of taking us out, maybe, why don’t you tell people, it sounds like legislatively speaking at the state level this is a boulder rolling downhill — things are happening and things want this. But if people want to get involved, what should they do?
Cora Stryker
What should they do? I want to pick up on that a little bit because you asked how many states are we talking about? You’re quite right. We have five that are public. You missed Maryland. We have five more that are for sure going to introduce this. We’ve talked to all the legislators, they’ve drafted their bills, they’re working their political magic behind the scenes before they’re going to introduce. By the way, a lot of them think they are already on their way to getting bipartisan co-sponsorship, which we think is key because this can’t be a blue state phenomenon or red state phenomenon.
This really has to take off in a non-political way and we don’t. Why should it be political? This is truly bottom line, cheap energy, good investment, lower household expenses, do what you want in your backyard. We don’t think it’s a political thing at all.
David Roberts
It’s just word of mouth, this is marketing wise for clean energy. Totally, this is magic. This is magic stuff here. This is the peer-to-peer spreading of this stuff that you want to get going.
Cora Stryker
Yeah, absolutely. In a way it’s the power of an idea. We started talking about this, we weren’t the first, but we have been speaking pretty loudly about it. The more people hear about it, the more excited they get. We have 10 that we know, 10 states we know are going to introduce.
David Roberts
Amazing.
Cora Stryker
We have another 20 that are considering it. We could, in 2026, in just a few months, be in a position where half of the United States of America is considering doing this. We think our odds are pretty good for getting it across the finish line.
David Roberts
That is awesome. And is there any reason to have your eye on any federal legislation? From what I can tell, all we really want is for the Feds to just stay out of this. Is there anything you want or need from the federal government?
Cora Stryker
The feds could solve this with one stroke of a pen or this could be law at the federal level. We don’t expect that for the next three years at least for reasons that confound us. There’s been a war on the cheapest energy on the planet, full stop. We don’t really understand it, but there’s a lot we don’t understand.
David Roberts
What a great way to fight back against that war. This is part of why I’m excited about this — I think people on the right have their media and politicians telling them that this stuff is all junk and unreliable, etc. A lot of people in the clean energy world just don’t have the media or access to those people to tell them otherwise. But this is worth a million words. Plug one of these into your wall — I think that does the work of a million arguments.
Cora Stryker
Yeah. And it’s going to be a consumer-driven thing. It can’t be yet because we’re constrained by regulation. But this is not going to require subsidies, it’s not going to require incentives, it’s not going to require any political friends. It just requires regulation to get out of the way and then consumers will push this forward and it’ll take off on market forces. And look, you can’t argue with cheap. Cheap is not a political matter. We think everybody will want some version, some way to make energy affordable. And we think this is a step. Look, it’s not the whole puzzle, I know that, but we think it’s a real on-ramp, a real, real gateway drug, as you used the word drug earlier.
David Roberts
Yeah, it’s very visible, very visible and tangible in a way. A lot of this other stuff isn’t.
Cora Stryker
100% and that has value in a lot of ways. And then word of mouth as you say. As soon as your neighbor says, hey, I cut my energy bill by this much, by spending this much, then that’s the tipping point we’re going toward, David. That’s what we have to reach. This has to be a rational economic choice for the consumer. It can’t just be this niche motivated out of the goodness of our hearts thing. And, by the way, rooftop should be that way as well.
Utility scale should be that way as well. This isn’t an episode about soft costs. I know you have already talked about that.
David Roberts
That’s a whole other pod.
Cora Stryker
Yeah, but listen, this is a way to take soft costs out completely. Because we’re talking about self installation here. Perhaps, yes, at first on a small scale, but it’s not going to stay small. It’s going to take off and it’s going to be big.
David Roberts
Beautiful. This is exciting. Cora. I have to admit I came to this subject slightly fatalistic about our ability in the US to do anything. But this is all much more tangible and much closer to hand than I thought it was. This is really happening and there aren’t that many big barriers. Very exciting. Thank you for coming on and talking us through it.
Cora Stryker
Thank you so much. It’s been fun.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time.
