Which plug-in solar kits are approved to buy in the UK?

Why this register is the thing that matters

Everyone is watching 27 August 2026, the day plug-in solar becomes legal under SI 2026 No. 848. But the date is only half the story. The law removes the ban; it does not create a product. A kit is only lawful to sell and plug in once it clears two gates: a notified body must approve its plug, and the finished device must be type tested to Engineering Recommendation G98 and listed on the ENA register. The register is the public proof that a product has passed. If it is not on the register, it is not a compliant plug-in kit, whatever the marketing says.

That is why this page exists. When the news breaks and the shelves fill, the one question worth asking about any kit is simple: is it on the ENA G98 Type Test Register? This tracker answers that, and nothing here is a compliant plug-in product until it appears below.

Compliant, approved kits: the list that matters

This is the only list that makes a kit lawful to plug in. A product must show a Compliant status here before it counts. As of 22 September 2026, 123 do, from 27 manufacturers, though only 20 of them are actually on sale.

Where to buy. The approved kits that are actually on sale reach buyers through Argos, Crampton & Moore, City Plumbing, Green2Go, Electrical2Go, iHelios and UKSOL direct, with Thunder Energy and PatioSun selling their own kits. The full list, with what each seller quotes for delivery and the collection prices that save up to £290, is on where to buy, and how long the wait is.

Three things to read carefully before you buy

0.8 kW is the export limit, not the panel wattage. The Pro Advanced is a 920W kit and the Pro Duo an 890W kit, yet both are listed at 0.8 kW. That is the inverter, not the panels. The Interim Product Specification (v2.0, 16 July 2026) caps a compliant device at 800 VA and 3.5 A, and allows PV module DC capacity above that, up to 2000W, with professional advice advised above 960W. Three entries break the pattern in the other direction, rated 0.475 kW, 0.34 kW and 0.799 kW by their manufacturers, and those are marked in the table above. Oversizing the array against an 800 VA inverter is the normal plug-in configuration, because a panel rarely produces its rated figure in UK conditions.

Compliant is not the same as lawful to plug in today. The Statutory Instrument and EREC G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 both take effect on 27 August 2026. A listing before that date confirms the device has cleared type testing, it does not bring the connection route forward.

The listing attaches to the kit as tested. Compliance sits against a system reference and a model code, not a manufacturer. The same kit in a different mount is a separate entry: the Pro Duo 890W appears twice, once as a hybrid mount (UKSOL/21007/V1/A3) and once as a ground mount (UKSOL/21003/V1/A2). So check the model code on the box against the register, not the brand on the shelf. Correction, 27 August 2026: an earlier version of this page said the Pro Plus 1030W was not among the compliant entries. That was wrong. It is listed as UKSOL/21012/V1/A3, alongside the Pro Max 1260W as UKSOL/21013/V1/A2 and the ground mount Pro Duo 890W as UKSOL/21003/V1/A2, three entries this page missed on first reading. Apologies.

What the first compliant kits cost, and how that compares

A compliant listing is only half the buying decision. The other half is the price, and the first compliant kits are landing well above the going rate for plug-in solar hardware in the UK and in Germany. The figures below are per watt of panel, which is the only way to compare kits of different sizes fairly.

Two things jump out, and neither is the headline price. The mount costs more than the panels. The Pro Duo 890W is £849 on a hybrid mount and £1,199 on a ground mount. Same 890W of panels, same inverter, £350 for a different frame. Worse, the ground-mount 460W is £849, which is £250 more than the 515W hybrid at £599 for less panel. If you have a wall, a balcony rail or a flat roof to work with, the hybrid mount is the cheaper kit almost every time, and ground mounting is the single most expensive decision on this page.

And buying direct is not cheaper. UKSOL's own store sells the ground-mount kits at exactly the Argos prices, £849 and £1,199, with UK mainland delivery included and shipping quoted within 14 days of 27 August. The one saving is click and collect, where the Duo 890W drops to £1,089, though that is £110 off in exchange for collecting from Hastings, Honiton, Sheffield, Doncaster, Durham or the Wirral, and not before 10 September.

Two patterns fall out, and the second one is new. First, per-watt price still falls sharply as the kit gets bigger: the 1260W Pro Max is £0.78 per watt against £1.85 for the ground-mount 460W, so a buyer choosing the cheapest box on the shelf is usually buying the worst value on the shelf. Every per-watt figure on this page feeds our plug-in solar price index, which tracks the median cost of a watt across the whole approved market. Second, and more useful, competition has already started doing its work. On 19 August the cheapest compliant kit anywhere was a UKSOL 515W at around £583. A week later Thunder Energy was selling a compliant 460W kit at £549.99 and a compliant 920W kit at £749.99, and a fortnight later PatioSun opened pre-sales at £449 for a 400W Lite, £649 for an 800W Duo and £599 for an 870W Max. The PatioSun Max at £0.69 per watt is now the best value on the compliant list, and it beats every UKSOL kit by a wide margin.

The entry ticket is still high, and the floor is falling. £449 is the cheapest lawful way into plug-in solar in Britain today, down from £583 a fortnight ago, and that is still a lot to ask of a household that came to this because it was billed as the cheap, low-commitment option. Three caveats on the PatioSun figures. They are pre-sale prices, and the site carried a stale delivery date and a scarcity counter when we read it on 4 September, so treat the delivery promise with more caution than the price. More importantly, its listed price and its checkout price are not the same number: the Duo is advertised at £549 and charges £649 in the basket, confirmed 5 September, so we quote the checkout total and you should read yours before committing. But the direction of travel is now visible rather than hypothetical, and it took days rather than the months most coverage predicted.

Was that a first-mover premium, and is it over?

The number is real, and some of it has an honest explanation. Type testing and registration cost money, and that cost is being recovered across a very small first batch. UKSOL manufactures under a British brand with UK support and warranty behind it, which is a different cost base to a global-volume manufacturer. The kits include mounting hardware and, in the ground mount case, delivery. The panels are high-efficiency modules, not commodity cells. And the comparison is not like for like on the thing that matters most: from 27 August 2026 a kit that is not on this register is not lawful to plug into a socket, whatever the brand on the box. EcoFlow itself was outside the register until 22 September 2026 and is now on it for three of its mountings. Buyers are paying for legality as much as for hardware.

Two things that do not explain it. VAT does not, because both prices are UK retail with the same 20% on top: strip it from both and the UKSOL 515W is £1.09 per watt against roughly £0.52 for the STREAM, so the ratio barely moves. VAT explains the gap to Germany, where private solar purchases have been zero-rated since 2023, but not the gap to EcoFlow. And scarcity of supply does not explain it either, because UKSOL is not short of panels, it is the only company holding a compliant listing.

On 19 August this page said the premium was real, that UKSOL held every compliant listing so nothing was constraining its price, and that the question was how quickly a second manufacturer arrived. The answer turned out to be about a week. Perlight Solar, Thunder Energy, InstaGroup and City Plumbing Supplies all cleared between 27 and 28 August, taking the register from seven kits by one maker to twenty by five inside a week, and to forty-one by twelve inside a fortnight. The cheapest compliant kit fell from £583 to £449 over the same period. That is a market correcting faster than almost anyone predicted, including the trade commentary that expected three months minimum for a second entrant.

I have written to UKSOL to ask about pricing and availability directly and will publish their answer here. In the meantime, my own read, and it is a view rather than a fact: if you need a lawful plug-in kit on day one, UKSOL is currently the only way to get one and the premium is the price of being first. If you can wait a few months for Anker, GoodWe, EcoFlow or anyone else to clear the register, waiting is likely to be the cheaper decision. Nobody should read a compliant listing as evidence that a kit is well priced. The register tells you what is lawful. It tells you nothing about value.

Update, 6 August 2026: the first entries appeared, all non-compliant

For the first time, devices are showing up under the register's Plug-in Solar device type. Anker Innovations and GoodWe Technologies each have entries filed in late July and early August 2026. This is real movement: three weeks out from the 27 August in-force date, a list that was empty is now filling.

The catch is the status column. Every early entry currently reads Non-compliant. On the ENA register that does not mean the device failed outright. It means, in the ENA's own words, that the device and its documentation cannot be deemed compliant at this stage, with the specific reason held in the device's compliance-status comments. It is the state a registration sits in while testing and paperwork are still being finished, and a device has to move from Non-compliant to Compliant before it clears the gate.

Recorded from the ENA G98/G99 Type Test Verification Register, Plug-in Solar device type, checked 6 August 2026. Entries and statuses change; the register is the live source of truth.

What it could mean

Three readings, and they are not mutually exclusive:

• Manufacturers are racing the date. Filing a type-test registration weeks before 27 August is what you would expect from makers who want a Compliant listing on or near day one. Anker and GoodWe moving first fits the lockstep pattern the government roundtable pointed to.
• Non-compliant today is not a rejection. It is a staging state. The likely path is documentation and test evidence being completed, then a status flip to Compliant. That flip is the moment this page is built to catch.
• Read the numbers before the badge. The 2.5 kW Anker entry sits well above the 800 VA plug-in ceiling in the Interim Product Specification, so even if it turns compliant it is a larger inverter, not a plug-in-route device. The 800 W entries are the ones inside the plug-in rules to watch.

None of this changes the buyer's position today. Until a device reads Compliant, the lawful way to fit panels is still a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection and a G98 notification. What has changed is the direction of travel: the list is no longer empty, and the first names on it are exactly the kind of mainstream makers you would want to see.

I update this by hand as I check the register. If you see a status flip to Compliant before I post it, email [email protected] and I will verify and update the same day. Adeniyi.

How to check a kit yourself

• Ask for the register listing, not a spec sheet. A compliant product has an ENA G98 Type Test Register entry. A brochure claiming "800W" and "UK compliant" is not the same thing.
• Check the plug is approved. The device must be supplied with a specific plug approved by a notified body for this use. A generic 13A plug does not qualify on its own.
• Confirm the numbers. No more than 800 VA output and 3.5 A, panels up to 2000 W DC (advice needed above 960 W), one device per household, no battery in the plug-in route.
• Remember the register is the source of truth. Until a product is on it, the compliant way to fit panels is still a CPS-registered electrician with a hardwired connection and a G98 notification.

What I am watching, and what is next

Two things decide when a Compliant listing lands: manufacturers clearing notified-body approval of the plug, and products completing G98 type testing and registration. UKSOL cleared both steps first, on 18 and 19 August 2026, and held the list alone for about a week. Perlight Solar, Thunder Energy, InstaGroup and City Plumbing Supplies then cleared between 27 and 28 August. Anker and GoodWe filed earliest of all, in late July and early August, and both still sit at Non-compliant, which is a reminder that filing order and clearing order are not the same thing. EcoFlow, whose STREAM range already sells here, and the retailers who joined the government roundtable, Amazon, Asda, B&Q, Currys, Screwfix and Wickes, are the ones I expect to follow. I read the register and the manufacturer announcements, and I update the list and the alert the day anything lands. For the underlying decision see the 27 August breakdown and the regulation page.