Where to buy a plug-in solar kit, and how long the wait is

The register tells you what is lawful and the price index tells you what it costs, and neither tells you the thing a buyer actually asks second, which is when the box turns up. That question is unexpectedly hard to answer, because most of this market is selling ahead of stock. Half these listings are pre-orders, one is a pre-sale advertising a delivery date from June, and several give no window at all. So this page collects what each seller genuinely publishes, quotes it as written, and says plainly where the answer is nothing.

Every seller, and the wait each one publishes

Collecting in person is worth real money

UKSOL runs the only collection network in this market, and the gap between collecting and having it delivered is larger than the gap between most sellers. Depots are Hastings, Sheffield, Doncaster, Glasgow, Honiton, the Wirral and Durham.

A ground-mount kit is a heavy, awkward pallet, so £290 to move an 890W set across the country is not a rip-off, it is roughly what pallet delivery costs. The point is that it is avoidable if a depot is near you, and that it is not advertised as a saving anywhere on the seller's own site.

The trap: not everything in a plug-in solar shop is approved

Thunder Energy sells four plug-in solar kits. Two of them, the Bolt 460W and the Bolt 920W, are on the ENA G98 register. The Storm 360W at £499.99 and the Storm 710W at £699.99 do not appear among Thunder's register entries, which means we can find no basis for plugging them into a socket lawfully. They sit on the same page, under the same branding, at prices that undercut the approved ones.

I want to be careful here rather than accusatory. A manufacturer can have entries we have not matched, listings change, and Thunder may be mid-assessment. But the buyer-facing point stands whoever the seller is, and it is the single most expensive mistake available in this market right now: compliance attaches to a model code, not to a brand and not to a shop. A retailer stocking approved kits is not a guarantee that everything on its shelf is approved. Read the code off the box and match it on the register before it goes anywhere near a socket.

What to ask before you pay

• What is the model code, and is that exact code on the ENA G98 register? Not the product name, not the brand. The code.
• Is this stock, or a pre-order? Six of these ten listings are selling ahead of stock in some form. That is normal for a market five weeks old, and it is worth knowing which you are in.
• What is the dispatch date, in writing? "Shortly" is not a date. If a seller will not put one in an email, that tells you something.
• Is delivery included, and to a room or to the kerb? Octopus is explicit that it is kerb-side. Ground-mount kits are heavy pallets.
• What is the cancellation position on a pre-order? Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations you have fourteen days from delivery to change your mind on a distance sale, and a pre-order you have not received yet is generally cancellable, but ask rather than assume.

Two sellers that need a caveat attached

PatioSun has the cheapest kit on the approved list at £449 and the best value at £599, and it also has the least trustworthy delivery information of any seller here. On 5 September its site was still advertising "deliveries from 1st June 2026", describing the Max as launching in May 2026, and running an "only 18 available" counter. Separately, its Duo advertises £549 and charges £649 at the checkout. None of that makes the hardware bad, and the prices are real. It does mean I would treat every date and every scarcity claim on that site as decoration, and read the basket total carefully.

Octopus Energy is the only energy supplier selling kits, at £450 for one 460W panel and £650 for two, with delivery quoted by the end of September. Its own device, OCTOQ/21124/V1, was still showing as Non-compliant on the register on 4 September. Ordering is not plugging in, and there is time for the entry to clear before delivery, but ask for the model code when it arrives. The full picture is here.

How this page is put together

Every lead time is quoted from the seller's own pages, read on 5 September 2026, and where a seller publishes no window we say so rather than estimate one. Prices come from the same dataset as the price index and the register tracker, so they cannot drift apart. Collection prices are shown here but deliberately excluded from the index, which is defined as delivered, so a collection deal never flatters the headline number.

There are no affiliate links on this page. Plug Solar Hub earns nothing from any seller of a compliant kit and has no commercial relationship with any of them. If a seller publishes a lead time and I have missed it, or one of these changes, tell me at [email protected] and I will update it with the date attached.

Sources: seller pages at argos.co.uk, octopus.energy, patiosun.co.uk, thunderenergy.co.uk, cityplumbing.co.uk, cramptonandmoore.co.uk, uksol.uk, green2go.co.uk, electrical2go.co.uk and iheliosliving.co.uk, all read 5 September 2026; ENA G98/G99 Type Test Verification Register, Plug-in Solar device type, read 4 September 2026. Educational information, not legal, financial or electrical advice.