Plug Solar Hub Changelog and Corrections

1. Recent changes

• 16 September 2026 CorrectedMost of this site was still telling you to hire an electrician you do not need

  We audited all sixty-eight pages, not the handful we had been editing. The result was uncomfortable. The home page, the register tracker and the new pages were current, but the reference pages underneath them were still written for the world before 27 August. Fifteen pages told a reader that the compliant route is a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection. That was true until the law changed. It has been wrong for three weeks, and it is wrong in the direction that costs somebody £250 to £450 they do not have to spend.

  The worst single item was on the register tracker, the page whose entire job is being right about this. It listed Octopus Energy as Compliant in its table and, four hundred lines further down, still said the Octopus device “is Non-compliant, so it is not approved and not lawful to plug in”. That is the fourth place that same error has surfaced. The same page was also a full revision behind on its totals, still saying forty-one kits from twelve manufacturers. Two other pages presented EcoFlow as certified or register-listed, including a green “On register” badge on the microinverter comparison. No EcoFlow device is on that register.

  Alongside the legal framing we corrected the money. The savings calculator was defaulting to an electricity price of 27.69p per kWh, two quarters out of date, so every estimate it produced was about six per cent high. The cap is 26.11p until the end of September and 26.32p after that. A starting price of £499 appeared across eleven pages as though it were the market floor, when it was an EcoFlow price and the cheapest approved kit is £432. A national saving of £180 a year appeared on six pages against the £124 we actually model. Every city page has been rechecked against its own generation figure at the correct rate, and the arithmetic now holds in all seven. An expired promotional banner, which a script had been hiding from browsers since 2 August but which was still being served to crawlers and screen readers, has been deleted from the source of seven pages.

  We also rewrote the 2026 tracker rather than patching it. That page was built on the premise that a forthcoming BSI standard would be the thing that legalised plug-in solar. No such standard was ever published, the route was abandoned, and SI 2026 No. 848 did the work instead. The page now records what happened, including that we expected the wrong mechanism and said so on every page for months.

  The reason all of this drifted is worth stating, because it is structural rather than careless. The site generates its headline numbers from one dataset using markers in the HTML, so they cannot go stale. That system covered eight files. The sentence naming the current kit count sat unwrapped in fifty-six. So the front page updated itself while the reference pages quietly rotted. Marker coverage has gone from about nineteen to three hundred and seventy-eight across fifty-eight files, and a new marker now generates the word-form summary everywhere it appears. The next register change is one rebuild, not a fifty-six file hand edit.

• 15 September 2026 AddedWe have started pricing kits by the unit of electricity, not the watt

  New page: what a unit of your own electricity actually costs. The price index measures pounds per watt, which prices the hardware. Nobody buys hardware. So every priced kit is now also costed in pence per kilowatt hour, being the price you pay divided by the electricity the kit will generate over twenty years, which is a number you can hold directly against the rate on your bill.

  The cheapest approved kit makes electricity at 2.4p a unit on a pitched roof, 3.3p on a south-facing railing and 4.7p on an east-facing one. Counting only the units you consume rather than export, the roof figure becomes 4.9p. The Ofgem cap from 1 October is 26.32p. Both figures are published because they answer different questions, and the second one is the honest one for anyone working out what this does to a bill.

  Generation comes from PVGIS-SARAH3 for London at the tilt and azimuth of each mounting, and the full method is on the page. The weakest assumption is clipping against the 800 VA cap, so rather than pick a figure and hope, we published the sensitivity: the cheapest kit costs 2.36p a unit with no clipping and 2.57p at an aggressive 8%. The conclusion does not depend on the assumption, which is the only reason it is worth publishing. Building this measure is also what surfaced the calculator tilt fault logged above.

• 15 September 2026 CorrectedThe blog index still said Octopus was not on the register

  The card on the blog index for the Octopus piece still read “Not yet. Octopus filed a microinverter with the ENA on 25 August and it shows as Non-compliant”. That stopped being true on 8 September, when the entry cleared as OCTOQ/21124/V1/A5. The article itself was corrected the same day and the home page banner on 12 September, but the listing card was missed on both passes. It now says what the article says, and carries the updated date rather than the original publication date.

• 15 September 2026 CorrectedOur calculator was overstating a balcony railing by up to 54%

  The savings calculator asks PVGIS for live satellite generation data, and it was asking the wrong question. It sent the latitude-optimal tilt every time, 42° for London, whatever the panels were actually fixed to. Direction it handled correctly. Angle it never asked about. So a kit bolted flat to a balcony railing was being modelled as though it sat on a properly angled roof.

  The gap is not small, and it is worst for exactly the people this site is written for. South-facing in London, PVGIS-SARAH3 gives 1,021 kWh per kWp at the optimal tilt against 743 vertical, so a south-facing railing was overstated by 37%. Facing east it is 800 kWh tilted against 521 vertical, an overstatement of 54%. Balcony railings are the defining plug-in solar mounting in this country, and we were telling those readers they would generate half as much again as they will.

  Advanced mode now carries a mounting input, and the angle it implies is what goes to PVGIS: roughly 10° for a flat roof or ground frame, 90° for a railing, fence or wall. The default reproduces the old behaviour exactly, so nothing anyone has already worked out has silently shifted under them, and simple mode still assumes an optimally angled mounting. When PVGIS cannot be reached the local fallback estimate now applies the same adjustment rather than quietly reverting to the roof figure. The method note on the calculator says all of this, including the date the fault was there until.

  We found this while building a per-unit price measure for the price index, which needed a generation figure the calculator could not supply. The uncomfortable part is that the fault was in our own tool rather than in someone else’s data, and it had been there since the calculator first called PVGIS.

• 12 September 2026 CorrectedOur home page banner said Octopus was selling a kit its register entry did not cover

  The scrolling banner at the top of the home page still carried a line written before 8 September: that Octopus Energy was selling a kit its ENA entry did not yet cover. Octopus cleared the register on 8 September as OCTOQ/21124/V1/A5, we reported that the same day, and the page the banner linked to has said so in its own title since. So the banner was contradicting the article underneath it and, worse, it was the more serious direction to be wrong in, because it implied a named supplier was selling a non-compliant device when it was not. The line now reads that Octopus cleared the register on 8 September, three weeks before its first deliveries.

  Two other things about that banner. It had been labelled Breaking in red with a blinking dot for sixteen days, which is not what breaking means, so it is now labelled Register watch in the site’s own colours and carries the date the prices behind it were read. And for anyone browsing with reduced motion switched on, the strip did not scroll and four of the six items were simply cut off with no way to reach them. That strip is now scrollable by hand when motion is off.

• 12 September 2026 CorrectedThe home page was still telling readers to hire an electrician

  Our own front page carried a three step guide that said the compliant route in the UK is a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection, and it said so for sixteen days after that stopped being the whole truth. Since 27 August a kit on the ENA G98 register plugs into an ordinary socket and is notified to the network operator afterwards. The electrician route survives only for kits that are not on the register, and the section now says exactly that. The same guide told people to order an EcoFlow STREAM, which is not an approved kit, so the step now sends readers to the register and to the stockists page instead.

  Two figures were also disagreeing with each other on the same screen. The hero quoted a modelled saving of £124 a year while the benefits block quoted up to £180, and the page quoted a £499 starting price in three places when the cheapest approved kit has been £432 since 3 September. The page now carries one saving figure and one floor price, both generated from the dataset rather than typed in.

• 12 September 2026 ChangedWe cut three sections off the home page, including the only one that paid us

  The home page has been carrying furniture from the period before the law changed. Three sections are gone. The EcoFlow STREAM comparison table, which compared three kits that are not on the approved register and carried the only affiliate links on the page. An illustrative animation of a sun crossing the sky, which was decorative and cost every visitor a large inline graphic. And an audience block that told readers kits start at £499, which is no longer the case. The Awin tag has been removed with them, because there is now nothing on the page for it to track.

  We are recording the commercial half of that plainly. Removing the EcoFlow table removes the home page’s only source of revenue, and we have not replaced it with anything. Those kits are not compliant devices, they are sold as off-grid and battery systems, and they still have a labelled home on the products page where the affiliate relationship is disclosed. Nothing on this site earns us anything from a seller of an approved kit.

  In their place the shadow simulator and the savings calculator now sit directly under the market band, near the top of the page rather than two thirds of the way down it. They are the two things on this site a reader can actually use on their own home, and they were buried. The page is roughly a fifth shorter and makes one third-party request fewer.

• 9 September 2026 AddedThe whole register is now downloadable, not just the priced part

  The open data behind this site now comes in three files rather than one. The price CSV carries the fifteen priced kits with seller, channel and read date. The new full register CSV carries all forty-eight approved kits, including the thirty-three that nobody sells, which is the part of this market nobody else publishes. The history CSV carries every index reading. All three are CC BY 4.0 and regenerated from the same dataset the pages are built from, so they cannot drift apart from what you read here. Prices now also carry a trade or consumer channel flag, and City Plumbing rows carry a match flag recording that our register mapping is an inference rather than the seller's own.

• 9 September 2026 ChangedThe floor fell 26% to £432, and the kit that set it is 940W

  The register now holds 48 kits from 13 manufacturers, and City Plumbing has listed three own-label kits that reset the bottom of the market: a Jinko 940W at £432, a DMEGC 930W at £444 and a DMEGC 1030W at £468. The last of those is £0.45 per watt, the best on the approved list by a distance. The comparison that makes the point: £432 buys 940W and £449 buys 400W.

  Read the two movements against each other, because most coverage will get this wrong. The index median fell 14% to £0.82 while the best available rate fell 34%. If the market were repricing, both would move together. Instead not one seller on the list cut a penny: a merchant arrived selling own-label kits at merchant margins. Every fall we have recorded since 19 August is composition, not price cuts. From this reading the index is also split by route to market, and consumer retail is exactly double trade per watt, though the honest reading of that gap is own-label versus branded rather than trade discount, and the page says so.

  Two additions. Octopus Energy cleared the register on 8 September as OCTOQ/21124/V1/A5, three weeks before its own first deliveries, and its two panel bundle at £650 enters the index at £0.71. Its product page names a “Fox ESS microInverter”, confirming at the seller what we had only inferred from the register. And because City Plumbing prints no register codes against its listings, we have published a mapping of shop listing to register entry, matched on panel wattage plus the HiFlow branding, which is the Hoymiles HF-800-WB named in the entry and the thing that separates the two 940W kits. That match is ours, not the seller’s, and the page says so in those words.

• 9 September 2026 ChangedWe turned down a paid referral deal from a manufacturer on the register

  Thunder Energy, whose Bolt 460W and Bolt 920W are both listed as compliant, offered a referral arrangement: £20 off for our readers and £30 to us on every redemption. We have declined both the commission and the discount code, and we are recording it here because a policy nobody can see is not worth much.

  The reason is specific rather than pious. This site publishes a price index of every approved kit, and the Thunder Bolt 920W currently sits at the median of it, which is to say it is the exact value that sets the benchmark. A commission on the product that defines our own measure would be the least defensible arrangement available to us. We declined the discount code as well, which is the less obvious call, because a code is still a commercial relationship even with no money attached and it creates a quiet incentive to feature one brand over another. If Thunder runs an offer open to the public we will report it like any other price, promptly and for free. Nothing on this site earns us anything from any seller of a compliant kit, and that is still true today.

  We are taking up the editorial half of their approach. Their point about older domestic wiring is the most useful thing in the email and almost nobody is covering it, so a page on what the G98 exemptions do and do not remove is being written, with Thunder as one named source among others. Three of their claims are on hold pending answers: their installation service is Greater London only on their own website rather than national, their Bolt Plus battery bundles are sold as 400W and 900W while their compliant entries are 460W and 920W, and no compliance statement about the battery appears anywhere on their site. We will publish nothing about Bolt Plus until that is resolved.

• 5 September 2026 FixedThe blog index went down with a redirect loop, caused by our own redirect change

  /blog returned "too many redirects" and served nothing. The cause was a rule we added earlier the same day, in the change that moved every .html address to a permanent redirect: alongside those, a single forced redirect sent /blog/ to /blog. The host already normalises between the slashed and unslashed form of a path by itself, so a forced rule between the two fights that normalisation and bounces back and forth until the browser gives up. It was the only trailing-slash rule on the site, and the blog index was the only page that broke, which is what identified it: every other page uses the same pattern without the extra rule and none of them was affected.

  The rule is gone, and the script that generates these redirects can no longer emit one, with the reason recorded in the file so it is not reintroduced. Honest note on how this happened: when the redirect change was written we flagged that its behaviour could not be tested from outside the host and should be checked on a preview before going live. That check did not happen, and the trailing-slash rule was the one part of the change no other page exercised. The blog index was unreachable for part of the day and we are sorry.

• 5 September 2026 CorrectedThe homepage claimed 1,000+ households. It is now a number anyone can check

  The homepage trust strip and the email signup both carried "1,000+ UK households tracking". It is not a figure a reader can verify and it is not one we can evidence, which puts it in the same category as the "tested" claims removed earlier today. Both are gone. The trust strip tile now shows the number of changes logged on this page, 61 of them, including 13 corrections, and the tile links straight here so anyone can check it in one click. The signup line now promises something about the email instead of claiming a list size.

  Publishing a corrections count on the homepage is a slightly uncomfortable thing to do, and that is rather the point. A shop never corrects anything in public. Both numbers are counted from this page by the build script rather than typed in, so they cannot drift, and they will go up.

• 5 September 2026 ChangedHomepage rebuilt around what this site does that a shop cannot

  The homepage was still introducing us as "editorial reviews with disclosed affiliate links", which stopped being the point some weeks ago. What separates this site from a retailer now is that it tracks the ENA register, reads every price on the seller's own page, and takes nothing from anyone selling a compliant kit. The hero says that instead, and leads with the number that matters most: 41 kits are approved and only 11 are on sale anywhere. The trust strip carried "Apr 2026, last updated", five months out of date on the busiest page on the site; that tile now shows the live count of approved kits. Both affiliate mentions have been reworded to "no affiliate links on approved kits", which is the accurate and stronger claim.

  The news ticker now carries the two new pages, the price index and where to buy with lead times, and a line correcting the cheapest-kit figure that circulates elsewhere: the cheapest kit you can actually buy is £549.99, not the £449 advertised. Every number in the banner, the count approved, the count on sale, the price index and the checked date, is now generated from data/compliant-kits.json rather than typed in, so the homepage cannot drift out of date the way that trust strip did. Verified by corrupting a value and confirming the rebuild restored it.

• 5 September 2026 ChangedTitles rewritten for the head term, and 26 that were too long to display

  Bing was flagging 26 pages with titles over 80 characters, which is long enough that the end is cut off in results. All 26 are now inside the limit, with the distinctive part moved to the front so it survives truncation in either search engine. The longest title on the site is now 80 characters and the average is 68.

  The head term, "plug in solar panels", was drawing 115 impressions at position 8.2 with no clicks at all. The page ranking for it did not contain the word "panels" in its title or its heading, and offered nothing to distinguish it from the seven results above. Its title and description now lead with the term and with the two numbers that separate this site from a retailer, which are the count of approved kits and the fact that only eleven are actually on sale.

  Two related corrections. The page on the 27 August law change still had a future-tense title, "The Day Plug-In Solar Becomes Legal", nine days after it became legal, so it now states what changed rather than what will change. And the renters guide claimed "7 Picks Tested by a Renter" in its structured data, the last surviving instance of a testing claim this site cannot support; it has been removed, matching the correction made to the budget guide earlier today. Separately, the one page on the site with no h1 heading, the RCBO safety explainer, now has one.

• 5 September 2026 AddedWhere to buy an approved kit, and how long each seller makes you wait

  New page: where to buy, and how long the wait is. Ten shops sell a lawful kit and only two publish a delivery date you could plan around, one of which is Argos at nine weeks. Four publish no window at all. Every lead time is quoted from the seller's own pages, read 5 September, and where a seller publishes nothing we say so rather than estimate.

  Reading UKSOL's own store to build it turned up a correction to our own price data. We had the Pro Duo 890W ground mount at £1,089 for click and collect; it is actually £799 to collect and £1,089 delivered, and the Pro Compact 460W is £699 to collect against £849 delivered. Collecting saves £150 and £290, from depots in Hastings, Sheffield, Doncaster, Glasgow, Honiton, the Wirral and Durham, which is seven, not the six we previously published. Collection prices now carry a flag in the dataset and are deliberately excluded from the price index, which is defined as delivered, so a collection deal can never flatter the headline figure. The index is unchanged at £0.95.

  The page also records a trap worth naming. Thunder Energy sells four plug-in solar kits and only two of them, the Bolt 460W and the Bolt 920W, appear among its register entries. The Storm 360W at £499.99 and the Storm 710W at £699.99 sit on the same page under the same branding, and one of them is under the £500 mark that draws the most search traffic in this market. Compliance attaches to a model code, not to a brand and not to a shop.

• 5 September 2026 FixedBlocking site data broke the site, and consent could not be withdrawn

  Three faults in the cookie consent layer, one of which was not an analytics problem at all. An unguarded storage read was killing the page. localStorage throws rather than returning empty when a browser is set to block site data, and one unguarded read part-way through site.js meant everything after it stopped running for exactly the visitors who care most about tracking. Confirmed by test: with site data blocked the hero rendering never initialised. Every storage access is now wrapped, with an in-memory fallback so a visitor who cannot store a choice can still make one for the session.

  Consent could be given but never withdrawn, which is the wrong way round: it has to be as easy to take back as to give. Every page footer now carries a Cookie settings link that reopens the banner, and declining now actively stops Microsoft Clarity recording and deletes the first-party analytics cookies rather than just leaving them in place. And the Google consent defaults were incomplete. Only analytics_storage was being denied, leaving the three advertising signals at their permissive default; all four are now denied on every page, and accepting grants analytics only, because analytics is the only thing the banner asks about and this site does not advertise.

• 5 September 2026 AddedA UK plug-in solar price index, with the method and the data published

  New page: the UK plug-in solar price index. Plug-in solar is sold in pounds and used in watts, and coverage since the law changed has quoted the first and ignored the second, which is how a £449 kit gets called the cheapest way in when it is one of the worst-value products on the approved list. The index is the median price per watt of panel across every kit on the ENA G98 register with a price read on the seller's own page, VAT and delivery included. It stands at £0.95, down from £1.04 on 28 August, a fall of 8.6% in eight days. The best rate available fell from £0.78 to £0.69 over the same period.

  The honest caveat is published on the page rather than buried: this is the second reading, the basket is whatever is on sale on the day rather than a fixed set held constant, and the entire fall is composition, because not one seller on the list has cut a price. The method is set out in full, the median is used rather than the mean because the range runs from £0.69 to £1.85, and the rows are downloadable as CSV under CC BY 4.0 alongside a history file. The page carries Dataset structured data, no affiliate links, and an open invitation to challenge any figure.

• 5 September 2026 FixedEvery page existed at two URLs. The .html duplicates now 301 to the clean path

  Every page on this site has been reachable at both /guide and /guide.html, both returning 200, which splits inbound links, citations and Search Console signals between two addresses for the same article. All sixty-nine pages now send a permanent redirect from the .html address to the clean one, plus /index.html and /index to the site root. The rules are generated from the files on disk by _build/make-redirects.py rather than maintained by hand, because the previous hand-written list had drifted and was missing twelve pages including this register tracker.

  Two details worth recording. The redirects are marked force, which is required rather than optional: the .html file physically exists, and a host serves an existing file in preference to an unforced rule, which is why the duplicates survived. And the old "clean path to .html" rewrites have been removed rather than kept, because the host already falls back to <path>.html on its own, verified live on this page, so keeping them would have left a rule pointing at another rule's source for no benefit. Alongside this, 285 internal links that still used .html were repointed at the clean paths so no internal link spends a redirect, and the affiliate disclosure and privacy pages had self-canonicals ending in .html, which have been corrected.

• 5 September 2026 RewrittenThe under-£500 guide was recommending four kits nobody may lawfully plug in

  The budget guide was written in April 2026, before legalisation, and every pick on it was an EcoFlow that is not on the ENA G98 register. It called the STREAM 800W "the cheapest compliant balcony kit", which was never true, claimed the kits had been tested when they had not, and still carried a promotional code that expired on 2 August. It has been rebuilt around the kits you can actually buy and retitled The cheapest plug-in solar kits you can legally buy in the UK, on the same URL. The new page separates three numbers that coverage tends to merge: £549.99, the cheapest kit you can order today and lawfully plug in, the Thunder Bolt 460W; £449, the cheapest advertised, which is a PatioSun pre-sale we have not confirmed at checkout; and 11 of 41, the approved kits actually on sale. Octopus at £450 is covered with its register status attached. Every "tested" claim is gone, replaced with what this site actually does, which is read prices at the seller and date them. The EcoFlow picks are kept below a labelled divider for off-grid and fixed-install use, with the affiliate links disclosed and nothing affiliate above that line. The cheapest-first table is generated from data/compliant-kits.json by a new KITS:BUDGET block, so it updates with the register.

• 5 September 2026 CorrectedPatioSun Duo is £649 at the checkout, not the £549 it advertises

  We published the PatioSun Duo at £549, the price shown on its product page, and a reader check of the basket found the checkout charges £649. The kit is now listed at the checkout total, and its cost per watt rises from £0.69 to £0.81. That changes the ranking: the best value on the compliant list is now the PatioSun Max at £599 and £0.69 per watt, with the UKSOL Pro Max 1260W second at £0.78 and the Duo third. The cheapest lawful kit is unchanged at £449 for the PatioSun Lite, which is its listed price, so read your own basket total on that seller before committing. From today PatioSun figures on this site are checkout totals wherever we have one, and the gap is flagged on the register, products and stockist pages. Thanks to Adeniyi for catching it.

• 5 September 2026 ChangedRegister doubles again to 41 kits from 12 makers, and two earlier findings are corrected

  The ENA G98 register now carries 41 compliant plug-in solar kits from 12 manufacturers: Perlight Solar and City Plumbing Supplies with eight each, UKSOL with seven, PatioSun with six, HDM Solar, InstaGroup, Modular Solar and Thunder Energy with two each, and APsystems, PowerXpress, Skyworth and The Impact Crowd with one each. On 19 August it was seven kits from UKSOL alone. Only eleven of the 41 are actually on sale at a price we have read on the seller's own page, which is the number that matters more than the headline count, so every page now separates approved from purchasable. The cheapest lawful kit is now the PatioSun Lite at £449, down from £549.99, and the best value on the list is the PatioSun Max at £0.69 per watt, which beats every UKSOL kit. Prices read at source on 4 September. Two corrections. The uniform-pricing finding of 28 August was wrong once trade merchants are included: City Plumbing lists the UKSOL 890W ground mount at £951.60 against £1,199 at Argos and UKSOL direct, a gap of £247 on the same kit, and the products page now says so. A second City Plumbing listing at £670.80 showed as a 515W hybrid on the product page and a 460W ground mount on the category page, so it has been removed from the pricing table rather than attached to the wrong model. And the claim that every listed entry is rated 0.8 kW is no longer true: two Modular Solar units are rated 0.475 kW and 0.34 kW, and an InstaGroup unit 0.799 kW, now marked in the tracker table. Two Modular Solar prices reported by NationalWorld are shown but labelled, because modular.solar blocks automated reading and we have not confirmed them at the seller.

• 5 September 2026 CorrectedOctopus Energy page said no Octopus kit was on sale. It has been since 28 August

  The Octopus page was published on 28 August saying there was no Octopus plug-in solar product on sale. Octopus opened orders the same day, at £450 for a single 460W panel and £650 for two, both including VAT and kerb-side delivery, with delivery quoted by the end of September 2026 and a Nook Cube plug-in battery promised for the first quarter of 2027. The page has been rewritten around what is actually being sold and carries a dated correction note. The substantive point survives and is now sharper: Octopus is taking orders while its own ENA entry, OCTOQ/21124/V1, is still Non-compliant, so the device has until the end of September to clear. Ordering is not plugging in and nothing here is unlawful, but buyers should ask for the model code in the box and check it against the register before connecting anything. Verified against the Octopus press release of 28 August 2026 and its bundle page, both read 5 September 2026.

• 28 August 2026 AddedWhere to buy an approved kit, and a uniform-pricing finding

  Added a stockist list to the products page, generated from the same data file as everything else. UKSOL sells through Argos, Crampton & Moore and City Plumbing on the retail side, and through its own store, Green2Go, Electrical2Go and iHelios online; Thunder Energy sells direct. The finding worth recording: on kits sold in more than one place, UKSOL pricing does not move. The ground-mount 460W is £849 at Argos, £849 direct and £849 at Crampton & Moore, verified at each. The single exception is the Pro Compact 515W, which ranges from £583.39 at iHelios to £670.80 at City Plumbing, so it is the only kit where shopping around pays. All stockist links are plain links; there is no affiliate arrangement with any seller of a compliant kit.

• 28 August 2026 ChangedRegister data moved into one file, products page rebuilt, Octopus filing covered

  Three things. The register now drives itself. Every listing, price and source lives in data/compliant-kits.json, and _build/render-kits.py regenerates the tracker table, the pricing table and the watch list from it between HTML markers. A register change is now a data edit and one command instead of an afternoon of hand-editing. Prices verified from the retailer. Argos: UKSOL Pro Max 1260W £989, Pro Plus 1030W £899, Pro Duo 890W hybrid £849, Pro Duo 890W ground £1,199, Pro Compact 515W £599, Pro Compact 460W £849, all free delivery. UKSOL direct matches Argos on the ground mounts, with click and collect at £1,089 on the 890W from 10 September. Thunder Energy direct: Bolt 460W £549.99, Bolt 920W £749.99. The finding worth reading is that the mount, not the panel, drives the price: the same 890W kit is £350 dearer on a ground mount. New page on the Octopus Energy ENA filing (OCTOQ/21124/V1, model M1-800-E, Non-compliant, and the same model FoxESS filed as FOXES/21121/V1 the same day), because filing is being reported elsewhere as though it were approval. The products page now leads with the twenty approved kits, carries no affiliate links on any compliant brand, and labels the non-approved section plainly.

• 28 August 2026 ChangedRegister goes from 7 kits to 20, and the monopoly ends in a week

  The ENA G98 Type Test Register now lists 20 compliant plug-in solar kits from 5 manufacturers: UKSOL (7), Perlight Solar (8), Thunder Energy (2), InstaGroup (2) and City Plumbing Supplies (1). On 19 August it was seven kits from UKSOL alone. Prices verified at source rather than second hand: Thunder Bolt 460W at £549.99 and Thunder Bolt 920W at £749.99 from thunderenergy.co.uk, and the UKSOL Pro Compact 515W at £583.39 from iHelios, all checked 28 August 2026. The cheapest lawful kit has fallen from about £583 to £549.99 in nine days, and at £0.82 per watt the Thunder Bolt 920W now beats every UKSOL kit under 1000W. The register tracker carries all twenty entries and a revised pricing section; the launch-day report keeps its original text as the day-one record with a dated update at the top. The "seven kits, one maker" framing has been corrected in 78 places across 54 files, including the launch-alert panel that appears on every page. Argos prices for several UKSOL kits are circulating in community posts but are not published here until confirmed on the retailer's own page.

• 27 August 2026 AddedThe timber balcony rule nobody reported

  New page: Can I put plug-in solar on a wooden balcony in the UK? Prompted by a subscriber who had heard the restriction existed but could find nothing written about it. Verified against the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Order 2026, SI 2026/896, in force 27 August 2026, which removes permitted development for plug-in solar where any part is installed on a wooden wall, balcony or enclosure, or on a timber-clad part of the exterior, with a matching Class B exclusion for wooden fences, gates and enclosures. The page is explicit that this is not a ban but a planning route, that it is England only because planning is devolved, and that no decisions exist yet so nobody can say how such applications will be treated. It also separates the planning rule from Building Regulations regulation 7(2), which applies to buildings with a storey at least 18 metres above ground and does not exempt solar panels under 7(3).

• 27 August 2026 AddedLaunch-day report, and a correction to the register tracker

  SI 2026 No. 848 and EREC G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 came into force. New article, Plug-in solar is legal today, here is what you can actually buy, covering the seven compliant UKSOL listings, the Argos Pro Max 1260W at £989 with delivery quoted on the listing as within 9 weeks, verified 27 August 2026, the per-watt comparison, the Met Office outlook for the rest of the generating season, and the exclusion of batteries from the Interim Product Specification. Correction: the register tracker previously listed four compliant kits and stated that the Pro Plus 1030W was not among them. Both were wrong. There are seven, and the Pro Plus is listed as UKSOL/21012/V1/A3, alongside the Pro Max 1260W (UKSOL/21013/V1/A2) and a ground mount Pro Duo 890W (UKSOL/21003/V1/A2). The tracker now carries all seven with a dated correction note. Regulatory wording across the guide, FAQ, BS 7671, BSI tracker, plug-in solar, renter guide, socket page, about and home page has moved from "not yet in force" to the live position, with the hardwired route retained for any kit not on the register.

• 19 August 2026 AddedPricing analysis of the first compliant kits

  Added a costed comparison to the register tracker. The first compliant UKSOL kits work out at roughly £1.30 to £1.85 per watt of panel (Pro Compact 515W at £670.80 including VAT at City Plumbing; ground mount 460W and 890W at £849 and £1,199 including VAT and delivery, as reported by TechRadar on 19 August 2026), against £0.62 to £0.94 per watt for an EcoFlow STREAM 800W kit on Amazon UK and €0.63 to €0.88 per watt for premium branded German sets. VAT does not explain the gap, because both UK prices carry the same 20%. The section sets out what does explain it, type testing cost recovered over a small first batch, UK manufacture and support, included mounting and delivery, and the plain fact that only a listed kit is lawful from 27 August, and is explicit that the remaining premium reflects UKSOL currently being the only manufacturer with a compliant listing. Also documents the VAT wrinkle: self-purchased kits are standard-rated at 20%, while contractor supply-and-install of energy-saving materials is zero-rated to 31 March 2027, per the House of Commons Library briefing CBP-8602. UKSOL has been asked to comment on pricing and their answer will be published here.

• 19 August 2026 CorrectedThe first compliant kits are listed, and this site said otherwise

  Four UKSOL Ltd plug-in solar kits appeared on the ENA G98 Type Test Register with a Compliant status, published on 18 and 19 August 2026: the Plug-In Solar Pro Advanced 920W (UKSOL/21014/V1/A4), the Pro Compact 515W (UKSOL/21008/V1/A4), the Pro Duo 890W (UKSOL/21007/V1/A3) and the Pro Compact 460W (UKSOL/21002/V1/A2), each listed at 0.8 kW, single phase. Until today this site stated in a dozen places that no approved kit was on the register. That was correct when written on 6 August and wrong from 18 August, and I am logging it here rather than quietly editing it. The claim has been corrected on the register tracker, the standards tracker, BS 7671, the guide, the FAQ, plug-in solar, the renter guide, solar panels into a plug socket, about and the home page, with dated update notes added to the three news posts rather than rewriting them. The compliant-route caveat is unchanged and still stands: SI 2026 No. 848 comes into force on 27 August 2026, so a compliant listing is not lawful to plug in before that date, and until then the compliant install remains a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection and G98 notification.

• 22 July 2026 CorrectedRegulation advice brought current to 27 August 2026 across the site

  Full-site audit and update of every regulatory claim to reflect SI 2026 No. 848 (made 16 July 2026, in force 27 August 2026), which amends the Plugs and Sockets Regulations 1994, the ESQCR 2002 and G98, working with the DESNZ Interim Product Specification v2.0. Removed superseded framing across roughly 30 pages: the "consultation until 30 June 2026" language, "no certified kit yet", the speculative "direction, not a decision" industry-view boxes, and stale "as of May 2026" date stamps. The compliant-route caveat is retained and accurate: no approved kit is on the ENA G98 Type Test Register yet, so until approved products appear the compliant install remains a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection and G98 notification. See 27 August, decoded.

• 20 July 2026 CorrectedThe enabling law is made, and it is not a BSI standard

  Earlier entries and pages on this site described the unlock as a "BSI product standard expected July 2026". That was wrong, and I am leaving the original wording in this changelog rather than quietly editing it. The actual mechanism is the Plug-in Solar Device Interim Product Specification version 2, published 16 July 2026, working with amendments to the Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 and the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002. Those amendments are made by SI 2026 No. 848, made 16 July 2026, laid before Parliament 17 July 2026, and coming into force on 27 August 2026. A full revision of the underlying British Standards is expected to take two to three years. The wording has been corrected across the site, and the detail is in what changes on 27 August and the government response breakdown.

• 23 June 2026 ChangedBluetti affiliate links go live via Awin

  Joined the BLUETTI UK programme on Awin (advertiser 32273) and switched the two Bluetti rows in the battery storage directory, the Elite 100 V2 and the AC200L, from Amazon to BLUETTI UK direct (bluettipower.co.uk), each with an "also on Amazon" secondary and a per-page tracking reference. The Anker and Jackery rows stay on Amazon until those programmes approve. Bluetti links are kept inside editorial content only, in line with their no-brand-bidding, no-direct-linking terms.

• 19 June 2026 ChangedEcoFlow affiliate links go live via Awin

  Joined the EcoFlow UK programme on Awin (publisher 2944871, advertiser 51797) and switched the EcoFlow product calls-to-action sitewide from Amazon to EcoFlow direct, 51 links across 13 pages, each with a per-page tracking reference. Every product now leads with an EcoFlow direct button and keeps an "also on Amazon UK" secondary, so readers still have the Amazon option. EcoFlow direct is preferred because the Awin cookie lasts 7 days against Amazon's 24 hours and the commission is higher. The calculator gained a soft "EcoFlow STREAM, latest price" link below the result, the highest-intent placement on the site. Non-EcoFlow links stay on Amazon: the Hoymiles microinverter, the Amazon Basics plug, the cable, and the Anker, Bluetti and Jackery rows in the battery directory, which move to Awin once those programmes approve. Disclosure is on every card and the affiliate-disclosure page names Awin.

• 19 June 2026 ChangedSearch Console review and conversion fixes

  Reviewed the 19 June GSC and Ahrefs exports (311 clicks and 10,612 impressions over three months, average position ~17, 34 email subscribers, around four referring domains). Acted on three findings. First, the calculator category: the sun-tracking explainer was pulling 2,139 impressions at 0.47% CTR for solar-noon searches, so it now funnels readers to the Solar Noon Calculator, whose snippet was sharpened, and the main calculator now links to it. Second, a CTR fix: the products page (1,008 impressions, 1.19% CTR) was retitled for "plug and play solar panels UK" intent. Third, indexing: refreshed sitemap dates on the six new pages and confirmed robots and indexability, ahead of a manual Search Console re-crawl request for the pages still in "Discovered, currently not indexed".

• 17 June 2026 ChangedSitewide correction: the legal route is the DESNZ Interim Product Specification, not a standalone BSI standard

  DESNZ opened a consultation on 16 June 2026, closing 30 June 2026, confirming the near-term legal route is an amendment to the Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 plus a DESNZ Interim Product Specification, modelled on Germany's DIN VDE V 0126-95, with G98 and ESQCR changes alongside. A summary of responses is expected by 22 July 2026. The site previously framed the mechanism as a BSI plug-in solar product standard expected July 2026. Corrected that framing across the homepage, the BSI 2026 tracker, the BS 7671 page, the guide, FAQ, products, city pages, disclaimers and related posts, published a dedicated consultation page, and set it as the homepage breaking-news banner. The practical position for buyers is unchanged: no certified kit exists yet, so the compliant install is a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection plus G98 notification.

• 10 June 2026 AddedNews post on the industry plug-in solar safety statement

  Published a news post on the 9 June 2026 joint statement from ECA, Electrical Safety First, the IET, NICEIC and SELECT, which urges the Government to put product standards, enforcement and safe install routes in place before plug-in solar is sold to consumers. Added a dated milestone to the BSI 2026 tracker and a callout on the plug-socket page. The post reports the statement straight and aligns it with the site's existing position: no certified kit yet, compliant route is a CPS-registered electrician plus G98, BSI standard expected July 2026.

• 6 June 2026 AddedCitable-facts block on Germany page for AI extraction

  The Netlify analytics showed /germany-most-popular-balcony-solar-kits as the single most-pulled URL by ChatGPT, 15 of the 73 daily AI-agent visits. Added a structured "Key facts about German balcony solar, sourced and dated" block at the top of the page, between the existing "Why this matters" callout and the "Why Germany leads Europe in balcony solar" section. Six numbered facts, each with the date, the source named in the sentence, and a styled .kf-src citation line: Solarpaket I passage date (26 April 2024) and effect date (16 May 2024) with Bundesrat as source, registered installations passing 1 million by mid-2024 (Bundesnetzagentur MaStR), real installed base estimate of around 4 million by 2026 (Solarwirtschaft), German electricity price 2024 ~€0.38/kWh (Eurostat), VDE-AR-N 4105 connection rules (VDE), dominant kit categories (PV Magazine DE), and the UK regulatory parallel (DESNZ + IET + gov.uk). Closes with a citation block addressing AI assistants and journalists directly: "Plug Solar Hub (plugsolarhub.co.uk), authored by Adeniyi Adeniji, last reviewed 6 June 2026". The block is styled with a left-border accent and dashed citation footer so AI extraction tools can identify it as a canonical facts block. Combined with the new /llms.txt that points AI specifically at this page, this is the move designed to extend the existing ChatGPT lead while making the page more attractive to Claude and Perplexity once they start indexing PSH.

• 6 June 2026 AddedGenerative engine optimisation: explicit AI-crawler allows + /llms.txt

  Netlify analytics showed 73 AI agent requests in 24 hours, all from OpenAI (ChatGPT-User/1.0 live browse plus OAI-SearchBot indexer), zero requests from Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews or Bing Copilot. That single-channel concentration is a real risk: if OpenAI changes its browse logic, AI citations drop to zero overnight. Two structural fixes to diversify. Robots.txt rewritten to explicitly name and allow 13 AI crawlers (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, Claude-Web, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, Bingbot, Applebot-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, cohere-ai) with the same /_strategy/ and /outreach/ disallows as the default policy. The explicit allow is a confidence signal that some AI indexers read as a publisher invitation to crawl more aggressively. New /llms.txt file added at the site root per the llmstxt.org proposed standard, pointing AI assistants at PSH's six highest-confidence pages (BSI 2026 Tracker, BS 7671 page, G98 guide, G98 form walkthrough, Germany page, yield CSV) with the preferred citation format ("Plug Solar Hub" or "plugsolarhub.co.uk", author Adeniyi Adeniji, [email protected]). Includes the editorial dates, the affiliate disclosure link, and an "Optional: positions PSH does not take" section so AI assistants do not put words in PSH's mouth (no "DIY-legal today" without the BSI caveat, no "no paid placements" claim because the site uses disclosed affiliate links). Netlify.toml updated with explicit text/plain Content-Type and CORS headers for both /robots.txt and /llms.txt so AI crawlers can fetch them cleanly. Target metric: see a Claude, Perplexity or Google-Extended request appear in the Netlify AI-agent filter within 4 weeks.

• 6 June 2026 ChangedCore Web Vitals: calculator INP fix + WebP image conversion

  Two more sitewide Core Web Vitals fixes. Fix 4 (calculator INP): added a 5-second AbortController timeout to the PVGIS API call on /calculator. The RUM dashboard caught a 7-second INP spike on 1 June where a slow PVGIS lookup blocked the main thread and the page could not respond to clicks. Now if PVGIS does not respond inside 5 seconds, the fetch is aborted, the spinner clears, and a clear message tells the reader to use the local postcode-based estimate already shown above (and try again in a moment to refine with satellite data). The local estimate is shown FIRST anyway, so the timeout is graceful degradation, not a content loss. Fix 6 (WebP image conversion): converted 26 large JPEGs to WebP at quality 80, swapped 127 image references across 36 HTML pages from .jpg/.jpeg to .webp. The hero image (balcony-solar) dropped 340KB to 160KB, ed-miliband-speech dropped 466KB to 48KB, buyer-checklist-cover dropped 364KB to 144KB. Original JPEGs kept on disk as fallback in case a server config issue surfaces in production, can be cleaned up in the next tidy pass once WebP serving is verified live. Combined with the image-dimension fix from earlier today, this should move LCP from Poor into the Good band, particularly on mobile where bandwidth is the constraint.

• 6 June 2026 ChangedCore Web Vitals sitewide: image dimensions + async Google Fonts

  Netlify RUM dashboard showed CLS, INP, FCP and LCP in the Poor band, driven mostly by Google Fonts blocking render and images causing layout shift as they loaded. Applied two scriptable sitewide fixes. Fix 1, image dimensions: added explicit width and height attributes to every <img> tag missing them across 40 user-facing pages, 34 new image dimension annotations in total (the rest were already dimensioned or were SVG inline). Image sizes read directly from the source files via PIL. This is the highest-impact CLS fix because the browser now reserves the correct space before the image loads, so text underneath does not jump. Fix 3, Google Fonts async: every <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/..."> converted to the async preload pattern (<link rel="preload" as="style" onload="this.onload=null;this.rel='stylesheet'">) with a <noscript> stylesheet fallback for non-JS users. 40 pages converted (the 3 unconverted pages are internal noindex pages that never used Google Fonts). This addresses the 1.52-minute FCP spike caught by RUM on 1 June, almost certainly a Google Fonts timeout, by making the fonts non-render-blocking. Expected effect: CLS and FCP move from Poor into Good band within 7 days of deploy as the RUM dashboard refreshes.

• 6 June 2026 AddedeFIXX bench-test video embedded with framing notes on four pages

  eFIXX's "We Tested Plug-In Solar. The Industry Got This Wrong" video (3-month real-world install, anti-islanding bench tests, oscilloscope-measured shutdown speed, Indolt Power Flex 2000 review) embedded on four pages with page-specific framing notes: /bs7671-plug-in-solar-uk (the primary placement, after the industry-view box, with prose explaining how eFIXX's measurements connect to the eight wiring branches), /bsi-2026-tracker (after the live-pin-during-backfeed section, as the practical demonstration of the trade view the tracker documents), /plug-in-solar (after the industry-view box on the pillar page, as the safety overview the page lacked), and /plug-in-solar-with-battery-worth-it (in a new "German market comparison" section covering the Indolt Power Flex 2000 reviewed in the video, with its 4 MPPT inputs, expandable battery, and projected £550/year savings). Every embed carries a green-bordered framing note above it noting the video pre-dates BS 7671 Amendment 4 publication (15 April 2026) and explicitly restating PSH's editorial position on the practical install today: until BSI publishes (expected July 2026), the CPS-electrician hardwired route remains the only usable compliant route. Reusable .video-embed CSS pattern copied from /blog-how-we-track-the-sun (16:9 responsive container, youtube-nocookie domain for privacy, loading="lazy" for performance).

• 6 June 2026 CorrectedRemoved "No paid placements" claim sitewide; tidied affiliate model framing

  Audit sweep flagged a direct contradiction: /products carried the line "No paid placements" two paragraphs above an affiliate transparency notice on the same page, and the homepage hero, trust strip and footer all repeated the claim. The site is editorial-first but uses disclosed Amazon UK affiliate links for product comparisons (Wirecutter / Which? model), so "No paid placements" was factually wrong and a compliance risk. Replaced across /index (4 instances), /products, CLAUDE.md, outreach/voice-style-guide.md, project-pivot-education-first.md with "Editorial reviews with disclosed affiliate links" or "Disclosed affiliate links" depending on the slot. Added a new rule to CLAUDE.md Affiliate section forbidding the no-paid-placements claim. The site's editorial independence position is unchanged; only the wording, which had stopped being accurate, is updated.

• 6 June 2026 ChangedSite audit sweep: sitemap, redirects, file tidy, image rename, strategy folder

  Site audit also corrected sitemap.xml to use clean canonical URLs across all entries (previously mixed .html and clean paths), added the six city pages (London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds) and /about, /renter-guide, /g98-dno-guide which were missing from sitemap discovery. Added matching clean-URL redirects to netlify.toml for those pages. Removed 22 excess files from the deploy root: products.html.bak backup, LibreOffice lock file, 15 long-name Amazon download duplicates that were not referenced anywhere, one orphan file with no extension, two unused short-slug images, one unused 1.9MB stock photo, and one unused product reference image. Renamed 6 long-name images to short slugs (ED miliband, 3 EcoFlow STREAM variants, STREAM 800W panels-only, Balcony solar) and updated references across 36 HTML files. Moved 14 internal strategy and progress docs from the deploy root into a _strategy/ folder, with robots.txt Disallow and a netlify 404 redirect for /_strategy/* and /outreach/*. Added noindex meta to /disclaimer-snippets (which was previously discoverable but unindexed). Repaired tail-truncated HTML on three pages that were silently missing closing tags. Deploy size dropped from 29MB to 25MB, file count from 179 to 144 in the public deploy. No user-facing content removed.

• 31 May 2026 CorrectedMajor accuracy correction: UK plug-in solar regulatory framework

  Following web-verified primary sources (UK Government press release 24 March 2026 on gov.uk: "Government to make plug-in solar available within months"; IET press release 15 April 2026; IET Wiring Matters commentary; EAL summary; NICEIC commentary; ITV News coverage of DESNZ ministerial statement), the site's position on UK plug-in solar legality has been updated across CLAUDE.md and /bsi-2026-tracker, /bs7671-plug-in-solar-uk, /guide, /plug-in-solar, /renter-guide, /faq, the Ofgem blog (editorial note) and the Schuko vs UK blog. The corrected position: DESNZ issued a written ministerial statement on 15 March 2026 legalising plug-in solar in the UK; BS 7671 Amendment 4 (published 15 April 2026) updates Section 712 to authorise plug-in via a standard plug for kits meeting the forthcoming BSI plug-in solar product standard, up to 800W AC peak; Regulation 551.7.1 redrafted for bidirectional energy flow; £25m low-income pilot announced 21 April 2026; BSI product standard expected July 2026, which is what turns the route into a practical buying option because no kit can be certified until then; until BSI publishes, the install for buyers today still defaults to CPS-registered electrician with hardwired connection plus G98 notification. The site previously read this as "Amendment 4 does not authorise plug-in" and the new BSI standard "does not on its own change BS 1363 or BS 7671", both of which are now superseded.

• 1 June 2026 AddedBlog post: From Schuko to BSI, Germany's path and the UK route ahead

  Published /blog-schuko-path-vs-uk-bsi-route, an investigative comparison of Germany's Solarpaket I plug-in solar path (policy and consumer angle, May 2024 to 1M+ installs) against the UK position as of 31 May 2026. The piece reads EcoFlow's UK STREAM Ultra Pro product page wording as the central retailer signal, maps the five-layer regulatory chain (primary law, product spec, socket authorisation, wiring regulations, network-side notification) for both markets, and asks whether BSI product certification paired with G98 notification satisfies the requirement on its own. The trade view is clearly labelled as a view, not a fact. Cross-linked from /bsi-2026-tracker, /germany-most-popular-balcony-solar-kits and /guide. Sitemap and netlify.toml updated.

• 28 May 2026 AddedBlog post: Ofgem's 13% price cap rise from 1 July 2026

  Published /blog-ofgem-price-cap-july-2026, a first-person breakdown of the 27 May 2026 Ofgem announcement (13% headline cap rise, 5% on electricity, 24% on gas) worked through on a single household bill (standing charge 54.74p, unit rate 25.07p, April use 137.33 kWh). Sets the price cap rise alongside the expected July 2026 BSI plug-in solar product standard while keeping the standards picture accurate: the BSI product spec does not on its own change BS 1363 or BS 7671, and the compliant install route in the UK remains a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection. Cross-linked from /guide and /blog. Sitemap and netlify.toml updated.

• 22 May 2026 ChangedRestructured the Guide navigation menu

  The Guide dropdown previously listed 15 links in a single flat column. It is now organised into five topic clusters, Basics, Regulations and standards, Hardware, Renters and Cities, each with a group heading, so readers can scan straight to the area they want instead of reading one long list. Every link and destination is unchanged, so internal linking and topical clustering for search are preserved. The new grouped menu was applied across all 35 pages that carry the site navigation.

• 22 May 2026 AddedIndustry-view sections on a possible DIY plug-in route

  Added clearly-labelled "industry view" sections to /bsi-2026-tracker, /bs7671-plug-in-solar-uk, /guide and /plug-in-solar. They set out the growing trade view that product certification of the inverter, alongside Sections 551 and 712 of BS 7671, could make a DIY plug-in connection feasible without rewriting BS 1363, and they address the live-pin safety concern with a real-life scenario. The new content is dated, marked as not government-confirmed, and kept visually separate from the confirmed-standards copy. The compliant route stated elsewhere on each page is unchanged.

• 20 May 2026 ChangedCorrected installation copy on the Complete UK Guide

  The "What plug-in solar is" and "How installation works" sections of /guide still described connecting a system "through a standard domestic socket" and a DIY self-installation route opening "from July 2026". That phrasing predated the April 2026 legality sweep and was inaccurate. BS 1363 does not currently cover using a 13A socket as an inlet for generated power, and the BSI plug-in solar product standard does not by itself create a DIY route. The copy now states the compliant route plainly: a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection to the consumer unit and G98 notification. Two internal planning documents were set to noindex so their forward-looking market language cannot surface in search.

• 27 April 2026 AddedGermany solar-day infographic

  Static SVG infographic added to /germany-most-popular-balcony-solar-kits, showing solar's share of Germany's electricity grid through a typical sunny summer day. Source-attributed to Fraunhofer ISE Energy-Charts (CC BY 4.0), cross-referenced with Bundesnetzagentur SMARD.

• 27 April 2026 AddedSite changelog page

  This page. Added at /changelog to act as the canonical home for substantive changes and reader-flagged corrections. Referenced from the Complete UK Guide and the BSI 2026 Tracker.

• 27 April 2026 AddedBS 7671 and Plug-In Solar in the UK

  New regulatory page shipped at /bs7671-plug-in-solar-uk, structured around the eight wiring branches that decide compliance for an 800W plug-in solar kit: protection from electric shock, connection of generating equipment, overcurrent and backfeed risk, isolation and switching, external influences, labelling and identification, inspection and testing, and G98 / G99 DNO coordination.

• 27 April 2026 ChangedSitewide nav: Guide dropdown

  BSI 2026 Tracker and BS 7671 & Plug-In Solar links added to the Guide dropdown across all 27 user-facing pages. Closes the 24-hour analytics gap where readers were hitting the new pages without a nav route to them.

• 25 April 2026 AddedBSI 2026 Plug-In Solar Tracker

  Standards-status tracker shipped at /bsi-2026-tracker, covering BS 1363-1:2023, BS 7671:2018+A4:2026, the BSI plug-in solar product standard expected July 2026, and ENA EREC G98. Each claim dated and linked to the primary source.

• 25 April 2026 DataOpen UK plug-in solar yield dataset

  Free CSV published at /data/uk-plug-in-solar-yield-by-city.csv (CC BY 4.0, 29 reference cities, PVGIS-anchored), with full methodology at /data/uk-plug-in-solar-yield-methodology. Modelled at the Ofgem Q2 2026 default tariff cap (27.7 p/kWh) and an indicative 5 p/kWh SEG rate.

• 22 April 2026 ChangedCalculator: UK postcode integration

  /calculator now accepts an optional UK postcode. Postcodes.io resolves it to coordinates, and PVGIS v5.3 returns satellite irradiance for those exact coordinates rather than a national average. Falls back gracefully to city-level estimate on invalid postcode, network error or timeout. Cross-page mentions added to /guide, /blog-plug-in-solar-calculator-uk, /blog-energy-security-plug-in-solar, /plug-in-solar-with-battery-worth-it.

• April 2026 FixPlug-in solar legality copy across 17+ pages

  After expert email feedback, the site was audited for any copy that overclaimed the legality of plug-in via a 13A socket. Phrasing such as "BS 7671 Amendment 4 makes plug-in solar legal" and "DIY-legal in July 2026" was removed across 17+ pages. Replacement copy describes what each standard does and does not do, and identifies the compliant route as a CPS-certified electrician with a hardwired connection. The factual-accuracy rule was added to project conventions to prevent recurrence.

• April 2026 ChangedEducation-first pivot

  Homepage hero, products page hero, and Open Graph metadata repositioned to address first-adopter readers (renters, flat-dwellers, researchers) rather than near-term buyers. Voice unified to first-person founder. Site-wide style guide added.

• April 2026 AddedBuyer's checklist lead magnet

  Free buyer's checklist landing page shipped at /buyer-checklist, with thank-you page and Mailchimp double-opt-in. PDF covers BSI certification, microinverter specs, mounting compatibility, G98 compliance, UK plug cable, insurance notification, panel efficiency, weight limits, shading and smart-tariff compatibility.

• April 2026 AddedSix UK city guide pages

  Local landing pages shipped: London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds. Each carries city-level PVGIS yield, Ofgem-rate-anchored payback, and renter-specific guidance.

• April 2026 AddedThree feature pages

  Shipped /germany-most-popular-balcony-solar-kits, /best-solar-kits-for-renters-uk, /plug-in-solar-with-battery-worth-it, and /best-plug-in-solar-kits-under-500.

2. Corrections logged after reader feedback

This is where corrections appear when a reader, electrician, journalist or solicitor flags an error. Each entry will record the date, the original claim, the corrected claim, and every page that was updated as a result.

3. Corrections policy

Reputation is the single biggest asset of an independent UK solar site. The corrections policy is short and binding:

1. Email me directly. [email protected]. Quote the page URL and the claim you think is wrong, and (where possible) cite the underlying standard, regulation or primary source.
2. Seven-day fix. I aim to apply substantive corrections within seven calendar days. Urgent legality or safety claims are prioritised.
3. Site-wide sweep. When a flagged claim appears on more than one page, every affected page is corrected in the same pass. The sweep is logged here under "Corrections logged after reader feedback".
4. No silent edits. Substantive corrections are recorded on this page with the date and a short note. Routine typo fixes and styling tweaks are not.
5. Source-led. Where I cite a British Standard, an IET regulation, an ENA recommendation or a UK government document, I prefer the more conservative reading and link the primary source. The aim is for any claim on the site to be verifiable in under a minute by following the cited link.

4. Related

• BSI 2026 Plug-In Solar Tracker for the dated standards-status view (BS 1363, BS 7671 A4, BSI product standard, G98).
• BS 7671 and Plug-In Solar in the UK for the wiring-rules detail.
• About this site for who I am and why I am writing this.
• Contact if you would prefer a contact form to email.