[24356] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] "Plug-In" solar may be coming to Calif.,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Sat Aug 29 16:00:22 2026
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:50:34 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
Message-ID: <20260829195034.GA14997@vortex.com>
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"Plug-In" solar may be coming to Calif., but watch out for the gotchas
The California legislature has passed (not yet signed by Gov. Newsom)
a law that would permit so-called "plug in solar" (up to 1200 watts)
to be used legally in the state without complicated registration
requirements. However, there are some important potential gotchas that
most consumers probably aren't aware of:
- Since the standard U.S. wiring is two 120 volt power phases
splitting a 240 volt feed, the solar power will only supplement that
half of the overall house load if plugged into a conventional
(non-dedicated) circuit.
- Plugging into a non-dedicated circuit can result in devices that
pull much power causing a potentially very dangerous overload of
wiring that will NOT typically be detected and stopped by common
existing circuit breakers on that circuit.
- Many residential power meters may read power generated by the plug
in solar as utility provided power in some circumstances, causing the
utility to bill you for power that you actually generated yourself.
Some of the fixes for these issues involve installing dedicated
circuits and/or using devices that require installation inside the
high voltage power panel of the house, which is not safe for unskilled
users to do. There are some "smart" devices that will solve some of
these problems without going into the panel, but the point is that
this all can be much more complicated to do safely than it may at
first appear.
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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