National Geographic reports:

On a quiet street in suburban South Salt Lake City, Utah, the stirring of an energy revolution is taking shape. There, outside the spare bedroom of an unassuming, thousand-square-foot midcentury home sit three angled solar panels plugged into a nearby outlet.

Unlike the highly technical and expensive hurdles required to install a large rooftop solar system, the setup on Andrew Leon and Victoria Mauro’s lawn is small, portable, and cheap. The unit generates enough electricity to run laptops, lights, and some appliances, including the refrigerator.

Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar because apartment dwellers can use it, is spreading quickly across the U.S. California is the latest state to pass a law reducing the red tape that has previously stymied consumers looking to generate some electricity from a small number of solar panels.

Utah was the first state to legalize balcony solar in the spring of 2025, and nine states subsequently passed similar legislation— Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Virginia, and now, California. New York lawmakers approved a bill that is awaiting the governor’s signature, while nearly two dozen other state legislators have introduced them.

Plug-in solar systems, typically comprised of one to three panels to stay below the maximum wattages allowed by the laws, enable users to save money on their power bills and to reduce the energy they use from power plants that generate electricity by burning fossil fuels. “The appeal of being able to make your own electricity, and for less money than you can buy it from a utility, that’s universal for Americans,” says Joshua Pearce, an electrical engineer at Western University in Ontario, Canada, who advanced the merits of plug-in solar a decade ago.

For most homes, electricity is generated in faraway power plants and transmitted through power lines. Homes where rooftop solar creates electricity wire the energy into the home through the circuit breaker panel, and excess electricity flows back to the utility. But power from plug-in systems stays in the home. With a small metal box called an inverter attached to the panels and plugged into the outlet, electrical currents are pushed to other outlets throughout the residence. Systems typically contribute 10 to 30 percent of an average home’s use, says Jennifer Eden, who works on renewable energy programs for the policy nonprofit Utah Clean Energy. [Continue reading…]