Plug-in solar, done properly.

Yes. It became legal across Great Britain on 27 August 2026 under SI 2026/848, provided the kit meets the DESNZ Interim Product Specification and is listed on the ENA Type Test Register. Kits that do not meet the specification are not legal to plug in, whatever the listing says.

Legally, yes, if the kit is compliant. Electrical Safety First's advice is to have your installation checked by a competent electrician first — in particular the type of RCD protecting the circuit — and to notify your network operator. That check, the fitting and the notification are what the £299 covers.

The RCD (or RCBO) in your consumer unit is the device that cuts the power if there is a fault. Type AC devices were not designed to work with the small DC currents that inverters produce, so they may not trip when they should. Type A, B and F devices are fine, provided they are also rated for two-way current. The type is marked on the front of the device, but the markings are hard to read and you should never remove the cover — we check it as part of the survey.

Yes. Any generator connected to the grid has to be notified to the distribution network operator under G98 — in Fife that is SP Energy Networks — within 28 days of connection. It is a notification, not a permission. We file it and send you the confirmation. You should also register the kit with the manufacturer so you hear about any safety recall.

For a house, panels on a wall or roof are usually permitted development in Scotland, and a freestanding frame in the garden normally is too. Flats, listed buildings and conservation areas are different, so check with Fife Council or ask us and we will say if we think it is borderline. Separately, the product rules prohibit fixing kits to certain cladding — ACM or metal composite, high-pressure laminate, timber cladding and timber balconies — and to buildings under external-wall fire remediation.

No. Plug-in batteries and solar kits with a battery built in are excluded from the regulations. The government says it will keep developing the evidence but has given no date, and Electrical Safety First's advice is not to install one. If storage matters to you, that is a properly installed battery system, which we also do.

No. Smart Export Guarantee payments require an MCS-certified installation, and a plug-in kit is not one. The value is entirely in the electricity you use as it is generated — which is why a fridge, a home office and daytime washing loads make more of it than an empty house does.

Possibly. Your existing connection was notified under G98, which covers up to 16 A per phase (3.68 kW). If adding 800 W takes you over that, it becomes a G99 application rather than a notification, and the network operator has to agree to it. We check this before recommending anything.

In Fife, most two-panel setups land somewhere between £75 and £150 a year, depending on how well they face the sun and how much of the output you use during the day. A four-panel kit in a genuinely good spot can reach around £200. Anything advertising more than that is assuming a tilted, unshaded, south-facing array, southern-England sunshine and every unit used the second it is made.

No extension leads, cable reels, multi-way adaptors, travel adaptors or RCD adaptors — the regulations prohibit all of them, and so do we. A properly installed outdoor socket on a suitable circuit is fine, and we can fit one. Lighting circuits and circuits feeding fixed appliances like ovens are also out.

No. Like every grid-connected inverter it shuts down when the grid goes off, so it cannot back-feed the network while engineers are working on it.

It covers the survey, the consumer-unit and RCD check, verifying the kit on the ENA register, fitting and connecting it, and filing the G98. It does not include the kit itself, any upgrade your consumer unit needs — both quoted separately as fixed prices — or landlord and factor permissions.