One person, a new law, and nobody explaining it

I started PlugPanel in August 2026, the month the law changed. From 27 August, a certified plug-in solar kit can be connected through an ordinary three-pin socket in England, Scotland and Wales, with no electrician and no scaffolding. Overnight, solar went from a nine thousand pound job to something you can set up in an afternoon.

What I found while researching it was that almost nobody was explaining the rules properly. Kits were already on sale that did not qualify. Sites were quoting payback periods that counted earnings for electricity you export, which a plug-in kit is paid nothing for. And the one thing every buyer needed to know, whether their own home actually qualified, was buried in a statutory instrument and a technical register.

So I built the tools I wanted as a buyer, and gave them away. A postcode checker that tells you which network operator you have to notify. A building checker that walks through the cladding and remediation exclusions. A savings calculator that values exported electricity at nothing, because a plug-in kit has no export agreement, and that tells you when your usage assumptions are looking optimistic.

Then I built the shop. We only list kits that are certified as a complete product to the UK specification, and we are straight about what the rules do and do not allow, including where a plug-in kit is the wrong answer.

It is just me. That means you get a straight answer from someone who knows the product, usually the same day. It also means if something goes wrong, you are not chasing a call centre.