The cheapest plug-in solar kits you can legally buy in the UK

What the floor actually is

On 19 August the cheapest lawful kit in Britain was about £583, and every compliant kit came from one company. Three weeks later the floor is £432 and it belongs to a plumbers' merchant. That is a 26% fall, and it did not happen because anyone cut a price. Not one seller on the approved list has dropped a penny. What happened is that City Plumbing built its own kits and priced them at merchant margins instead of solar-brand margins.

A headline price is only useful if you can act on it, so this page still distinguishes three numbers rather than one.

The third number is the one most coverage skips. One hundred and nine kits clearing the register sounds like a full shelf. Eighty-nine of them cannot be bought anywhere at any price, so the choice in front of a real buyer is far narrower than the headline count suggests, and it is worth knowing that the gap between approved and purchasable is getting wider, not narrower.

Every compliant kit you can buy, cheapest first

These are the kits on the ENA G98 Type Test Register with a price we have read on the seller's own page. Compliance attaches to a model code, not to a brand, so check the code on the box against the register before you plug anything in. There are no affiliate links in this table, and Plug Solar Hub earns nothing from any seller of a compliant kit.

Five kits are now under £500, and three of them are good

Four days ago this section listed two sub-£500 kits and explained why I would not lead with either. That is no longer the shape of the market, so here is all five, best first.

DMEGC 1030W, £468, City Plumbing. A kilowatt of panel for under £470, which works out at £0.45 a watt and is the best value on the entire approved list, by a distance. Two DMEGC 515W panels on a Hoymiles HF-800-WB inverter. In stock at a trade counter, and you do not need a trade account to buy it.

Jinko 940W, £432, City Plumbing. The cheapest compliant kit in Britain, and it is 940W. £0.46 a watt. Two Jinko 470W panels, same inverter.

DMEGC 930W, £444, City Plumbing. £0.48 a watt. Effectively the same proposition as the Jinko at twelve pounds more for ten fewer watts, so take whichever is in stock at your branch.

Octopus Energy single panel, £450. One JA Solar 460W panel, inc VAT and delivery, delivery estimated end of September. Its device cleared the register on 8 September, so the compliance question that hung over this a week ago is settled. But at £0.98 a watt it is more than twice the cost per watt of the City Plumbing kits, and Octopus’s own two panel bundle at £650 is £0.71. If you are buying from Octopus, buy the two panel one.

PatioSun Lite, £449. A 400W kit at £1.12 a watt, which is now the clearest illustration on this page of why headline price is the wrong number: it costs seventeen pounds more than a 940W kit. It is also a pre-sale rather than stock, the page carried a delivery date that had already passed when we read it, and PatioSun’s listed price and checkout price are not the same number, since its Duo advertises £549 and charges £649 in the basket. I would not buy it.

Why nothing lawful costs £349 yet

Readers coming from the German market, or from an EcoFlow listing, have been asking for months why the UK floor was not lower. Most of the answer has just arrived, so this section is now partly a record of what was true a fortnight ago.

• Type testing costs real money and it is being recovered over tiny batches. Every compliant kit has been through G98 type testing and a notified body assessment of its plug. That cost is fixed, and dividing it across a first production run of a few hundred units puts pounds on every box.
• VAT, but only against Germany. A self-purchased kit is standard-rated at 20% in the UK. Germany zero-rated private solar purchases in 2023. That explains the gap to a €500 German set, and it explains none of the gap between two UK products, because both carry the same 20%.
• Almost no competition at the bottom, until there was. A fortnight ago eleven kits were on sale and only four were under £600. The floor did not fall because those four cut their prices, because none of them did. It fell because a merchant with its own supply chain entered and sold at merchant margins. That is what competition at the bottom looks like when it finally arrives, and it took one entrant.

My own read is that £432 is not the end of it. Thirty-three approved kits still have no price anywhere, and if own-label merchant kits are the model then Screwfix, Toolstation, Wickes and Selco all have the same supply chains and the same reason to use them. The more interesting question is no longer whether a kit drops below £400. It is whether batteries come into scope before next summer, because storage is what turns a modest bill saving into a good one for anyone out of the house between nine and five, and no amount of cheap panel fixes that.

What you get at the floor, and what you do not

What is in

• One or two panels and a microinverter, rated at 0.8 kW or below, which is the export ceiling the DESNZ Interim Product Specification sets.
• A UK three pin lead, because a compliant device has to be assessed with the plug it ships with.
• Mounting hardware on most kits, though ground mounts cost meaningfully more than hybrid or wall mounts. The same UKSOL 890W kit is £849 on a hybrid mount and £1,199 on a ground mount.
• A lawful route to notify your network operator after the fact, with no electrician and no consumer unit work.

What is out

• Battery storage. Batteries are explicitly out of scope of the plug-in route. A kit that stores energy for later is a different regulatory animal and needs a fixed install.
• A second device. One plug-in micro-generator per household under the amended G98.
• Anything on a timber balcony in England without a planning application, after SI 2026/896. Our timber balcony page sets out what that actually restricts.
• Zero-rated VAT, unless a contractor supplies and installs it, which for a plug-in kit rather defeats the point.

Not on the register, and what these are still good for

These were the picks on this page when it was written in April 2026, and they are kept because they remain sensible buys for the jobs described, not because they are cheap ways into plug-in solar. They are not.

Not on the register · Best for a future fixed install Starter kit

EcoFlow STREAM 800W Balcony Solar Kit

Two 400W panels, an 800W microinverter, Wi-Fi monitoring, and compatibility with the STREAM AC Pro battery module. It is not on the ENA register, so it cannot lawfully be plugged into a socket. It makes sense if you intend to have an electrician wire it in, or if you want a modular system you can grow, and it is priced where it is because it does not carry type-testing cost.

Pros

• Modular, add battery later
• Wi-Fi + app monitoring
• Widely stocked on Amazon UK
• Matches UK G98 limit

Cons

• No battery at this price
• Mounting hardware sold separately for lattice balconies

~£499 on Amazon UK

Check price at EcoFlow → also on Amazon UK

Not on the register · Rent-safe mounting Balcony bundle

EcoFlow STREAM 800W + Lattice Balcony Bracket

The same STREAM 800W hardware with a lattice-balcony bracket, which solves the hardest part of a rented flat install, mounting without drilling. Same caveat as above: not on the register, so not lawful to plug into a socket. The bracket itself is worth knowing about whatever kit you end up buying.

Pros

• Rent-safe mounting, no holes
• Best flat-dweller bundle at this price
• Same spec as the top pick

Cons

• Bracket only fits lattice-style railings
• Check your balcony clearance first

~£499 on Amazon UK

Check price at EcoFlow → also on Amazon UK

Not on the register · Pitched roof mounting Pitched roof bundle

EcoFlow STREAM 800W + Pitched-Roof Bracket

The same STREAM 800W hardware bundled with pitched-roof brackets, for garage roofs, outbuildings and small south-facing extensions. Not on the register. If a roof is where your kit is going, note that a pitched mount typically yields more than a flat balcony, which is worth more than the price difference over a year.

Pros

• All mounting included
• Better tilt angle than flat balcony
• Typically yields more kWh/year

Cons

• Needs roof access and safe working
• Some landlords won't allow roof drilling

~£499 on Amazon UK

Check price at EcoFlow → also on Amazon UK

Off-grid · Lawful to use today, no socket connection Portable + flexible

EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus Portable Power Station

A 1024Wh portable LFP battery with 1800W solar input, and the one product in this section with no regulatory question attached, because it never touches your ring main. Pair it with a folding panel and it is a moveable solar and storage system for a renter or for camping. LFP, 4,000 cycles and up.

Pros

• Portable, comes with you
• 1024Wh real battery at under £700
• Works off-grid (camping/power cuts)

Cons

• No panels included, add separately
• Slightly over the £500 budget

~£699 on Amazon UK

Check price at EcoFlow → also on Amazon UK

Three traps at the cheap end

• A kit sold as plug-in solar is not automatically a compliant plug-in device. This is the trap that costs the most. Marketing copy and register status are unrelated. Check the model code, not the badge, not the phrase on the box.
• String inverters. Shade one panel and output collapses across the string. Every kit on the compliant list uses a microinverter, which is one of the quiet benefits of buying from the register.
• An advertised price that is not the checkout price. We found this the hard way on PatioSun, whose Duo advertises £549 and charges £649. Take the basket total to the point of payment before you decide anything is the cheapest.
• A shop that does not show you the model code. The three cheapest kits in Britain are sold by a merchant whose listings carry no register code at all. That does not make them non-compliant, and we believe all three are listed. It does mean the one check you are told to do is not possible from the product page, so ask the branch.

What you actually save in year one

An 800W kit in southern England generates roughly 650 to 900 kWh a year depending on orientation, shading and how far north you are. What you keep from that depends almost entirely on whether anyone is home in daylight. If you are in during the day you will self-consume 50 to 70% of it. If the house is empty from nine to five and you have no battery, expect closer to 30%.

This is where the last fortnight actually shows up. On the old floor, a £549.99 kit with 460W of panel, payback ran to somewhere between five and ten years. On a £432 kit with 940W of panel you are paying less money for more than twice the generation, which on the same self-consumption assumptions roughly halves the payback. That is a genuine change in the economics, not a marketing one, and it happened in four days. It is still not a fast financial win, and it is still a poor deal for a household that is empty from nine to five until batteries come into scope. Put your own postcode and usage into the savings calculator rather than trusting any range, including mine.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest plug-in solar kit you can legally buy in the UK?

A Jinko 940W Hoymiles HiFlow kit at £432 from City Plumbing, in stock, read at the seller on 9 September 2026. It is also 940W, which means it costs seventeen pounds less than a 400W PatioSun Lite at £449. Two more City Plumbing kits sit under £500, a DMEGC 930W at £444 and a DMEGC 1030W at £468.

Can you get a compliant plug-in solar kit under £500?

Yes, comfortably, and that changed on 9 September 2026. Five approved kits are now under £500: three City Plumbing own-label kits at £432, £444 and £468, an Octopus single panel at £450 and a PatioSun Lite at £449. The three City Plumbing kits are the ones worth having, because they carry 930W to 1030W of panel while the other two carry 400W and 460W.

What is the best value plug-in solar kit, rather than the cheapest?

The City Plumbing DMEGC 1030W at £468, which is £0.45 a watt, the lowest on the compliant list. Its Jinko 940W at £432 is second at £0.46. The best from a solar brand rather than a merchant is the PatioSun Max at £0.69. Per watt is the number to compare, because the cheapest box on the shelf is usually the worst value on it, and we track it across the whole market on the price index.

Is the EcoFlow STREAM legal to plug in?

No. The STREAM is not on the ENA G98 Type Test Register, so it may not lawfully be plugged into a socket to feed your home. It is a capable product for off-grid use or for a fixed install wired by an electrician, and it is listed further down this page for those uses.

Why are UK kits more expensive than German balcony kits?

Type testing costs recovered over small first batches, and 20% VAT on a self-purchased kit against Germany's zero rate since 2023. VAT explains the gap to Germany. It explains none of the gap between two UK products, because both carry the same 20%.

Should I wait for prices to fall?

Supply, not price, is what is holding this market back. Only 20 of the 123 approved kits are on sale anywhere, so most of the register is still something you cannot buy. Own-label merchant kits reset the floor once already, and other merchants share those supply chains, so more are likely to follow. At £0.45 a watt the best value on the list is already reasonable. If your main interest is battery storage, the plug-in route will not help you, because batteries remain out of scope of it.

Related reading: The plug-in solar price index · Where to buy, and the wait · Every approved kit with prices · Best solar kits for UK renters · Is a plug-in solar battery worth it? · What Germany's balcony boom teaches UK buyers