A portable power station stores electricity you put into it and runs whatever you plug into its own sockets. A plug-in solar device feeds solar power into your home’s ring circuit, so the house buys less from the meter. Both involve solar panels. They answer different problems, and UK law treats them as two separate things.
That last point is where buying decisions go wrong. Search for a solar generator and you’ll be shown battery boxes with carry handles. Search for plug-in solar and you’ll be shown panels on a railing. The marketing vocabulary is almost interchangeable even though the hardware does an unrelated job, and from 27 August 2026 only one of the two sits inside the new statutory framework.
The Short Answer
| Plug-in solar device | Solar generator | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does with energy | Feeds it into the house wiring | Stores it in an internal battery |
| What it powers | Whatever the home is drawing at that moment | Whatever is plugged into the unit |
| Where the energy comes from | Solar panels | A wall outlet, a car, or folding panels |
| Works during a power outage | No | Yes |
| DNO notification | Mandatory | Not required while it stays off the network |
| Covered by SI 2026 No. 848 and IPS v2 | Yes | No |
| Reduces your bill by itself | Yes, modestly | No |
| Portability | Fixed once mounted | The whole point of it |
Read that table twice before spending anything.
Grid-tied and off-grid, in one sentence each
A grid-tied device works alongside the mains supply, and its output disappears into whatever the household is using. An off-grid device works on its own, and its output only reaches things you physically connect to it. Plug-in solar is the first kind. A power station is the second, unless the maker has added a feed-in feature, which changes everything.
What a Plug-In Solar Device Actually Does
A plug-in solar device is one or more PV modules, a grid-following microinverter, DC cabling and a factory-fitted lead ending in a BS 1363 plug. Mount the panels, plug the lead into an ordinary socket, and the inverter starts pushing AC into the ring final circuit.
Nothing in the house knows where the electricity came from. The fridge compressor, the router and anything else drawing power take the local supply first, because it’s electrically closer than the substation. Your meter records the shortfall. Our explainer on how plug-in solar panels work has the detail.
Two consequences follow. The first is that there’s no energy storage. Solar power the house isn’t using at that instant leaves through the meter, and without an export arrangement it earns nothing. Self-consumption is the whole economic model.
The second is that a compliant device shuts down when the mains goes away, which is a legal requirement rather than a design compromise. Regulation 22(2)(b) of the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002 requires the source of energy to be "configured to disconnect itself electrically from the parallel connection when the distributor’s equipment disconnects the supply of electricity to the person’s installation". Anti-islanding exists so a linesman working on a dead cable isn’t fed 230 V by somebody’s balcony. It also means plug-in solar contributes nothing during grid outages.
What a Portable Power Station Actually Does
A power station is a lithium battery bank, a power inverter, a solar charge controller and a battery management system in one case, with sockets and USB ports on the outside. It’s an energy solution you can carry.
Energy goes in by one of three routes: a wall outlet, a 12 V car socket, or portable solar panels feeding its solar input. It comes back out through the unit’s own outputs, and only to things plugged into them. The unit has no electrical relationship with your house wiring beyond being a load while it charges.
That makes it useful where plug-in solar is useless. Camping, vanlife, allotments, market stalls, an unheated workshop, and emergency backup when the street goes dark. What you’re buying is portability and reliable power where there is none.
None of that helps with the job plug-in solar exists to do. The box doesn’t cut your standing consumption, because the house is still fed from the meter. Recharge it from the mains, run a laptop off it, and you’ve lost a slice of the energy in the round trip. You end up slightly worse off unless the charge came from the sun or a cheap overnight rate.
Two limits worth knowing. Battery lifespan is counted in charge cycles, so the more you recharge it the sooner the cells fade. And limited power capacity is the defining constraint, because it all has to fit in a case you can lift.
"Solar Generator" Is a Marketing Term, Not a Device Category
There’s no generator inside a solar generator. Nothing rotates, nothing burns. The phrase was borrowed from petrol and diesel machines, which American writing calls a gas generator, because it told campers what the box replaced. Any battery unit sold with a panel bundled in now gets called a solar powered generator, a portable solar generator, or a versatile power solution.
The borrowed word does real damage. A generator makes electricity on demand, whereas portable generators of the solar-powered kind hand back only what you already put in. If the battery is flat and the sky is grey, an all-in-one power solution supplies nothing.
Retailers apply the same vocabulary to mains-connected hardware. The EcoFlow PowerStream, covered in our PowerStream review, is a microinverter with no battery of its own, often shelved beside solar power stations. Where one phrase covers three unrelated architectures, read the spec sheet instead of the title. Both energy systems deliver clean energy at the point of use, which is about all they share.
The Regulatory Asymmetry That Decides It
This part governs whether you can legally use the thing, and it falls very differently on the two.
SI 2026 No. 848 creates the plug-in route by defining a new term, "plug-in microgenerator", then attaching obligations to it. All five limbs of the definition have to be met. A plug-in microgenerator is a source of energy which:
- (a) generates electricity from the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity;
- (b) has a maximum rated alternating current output not exceeding 800 watts;
- (c) is intended for connection to a low voltage consumer’s installation by means of a standard plug and socket;
- (d) is designed to operate in parallel with a distributor’s network; and
- (e) is not designed to import electrical energy from a low voltage consumer’s installation for the purpose of storing energy for later supply, other than for control or auxiliary functions permitted by the Plug-in Solar Device Interim Product Specification.
Limb (d) settles the solar generator vs plug-in solar question. An ordinary power station isn’t designed to operate in parallel with a distributor’s network. It runs as an island, so it isn’t a plug-in microgenerator, and the machinery hanging off that definition doesn’t reach it.
The same boundary appears in the older regulation. ESQCR 2002 regulation 22(1) opens with "no person shall install or operate a source of energy which may be connected in parallel with a distributor’s network unless", and everything after that, including the duty at regulation 22(2)(c) to advise the distributor before commissioning, hangs on parallel connection. No parallel connection, no duty. G98 is a connection standard, so it has nothing to attach to either. Our G98 notification guide covers the process for devices that do need it.
A battery unit used as a battery unit therefore sits outside the Interim Product Specification, outside the ENA register requirement, outside G98, and outside both the 800 VA ceiling and the one-device-per-household limit. You can own three. Nobody needs telling. General product safety law still applies, and the plug-in framework simply isn’t engaged.
The boundary is backfeeding, and the wording is "may be"
All of that holds only while the unit never pushes electricity into your house wiring. Note the exact trigger in ESQCR regulation 22(1): a source of energy which may be connected in parallel. That reads as a test of capability. A unit with an AC feed-in function arguably crosses the line the moment you own it, whether or not you switch the feature on. We haven’t seen that reading tested, and we’re flagging it rather than resolving it.
Plug-in solar sits on the other side of that line. It’s a plug-in microgenerator by design, so the specification, the ENA listing requirement, the mandatory DNO notification and the device limits all apply from the moment it becomes lawful. Our guide to whether balcony solar is legal in the UK sets out what has to be true before you connect one.
The Machines That Sit in Both Categories
Between the two clean cases sits a family of products marketed as balcony power stations: a battery, a microinverter and an app, storing solar energy during the day and feeding it back into the ring circuit in the evening. Anker’s Solarbank line, Zendure’s SolarFlow and Jackery’s Navi 2000 all work this way. The idea is a good one, because it fixes the biggest weakness of plug-in solar, that the sun shines when nobody’s home.
The Jackery Navi 2000 is the clearest illustration: a real product launched into the German market, pairing a 2 kWh LiFePO4 battery expandable to 8 kWh with up to 800 W of PV input and an 800 W AC feed-in. It has never been sold through the UK store and has no UK pricing.
Under the UK route, that architecture runs into limb (e). A device designed to import from the consumer’s installation in order to store energy for later supply falls outside the definition, and charging from the mains is exactly what these units do. The exclusion is statutory, and it lives in the definition rather than in the specification. There’s a fuller treatment on why battery kits are excluded, including the route that stays open to them, which is a conventional installation certified by an electrician. The upshot: a battery-integrated balcony kit can’t use the plug-and-play route, however well it’s built.
Key Differences That Actually Matter
| Question | Plug-in solar device | Solar generator |
|---|---|---|
| Cuts the standing draw of the whole home | Yes | No |
| Runs high-wattage appliances | No, output is capped well below a kettle | Only models with high power output |
| Home backup during a power cut | No, anti-islanding disconnects it | Yes, that’s its main domestic use |
| Off-grid living, sheds, allotments | No, it needs a mains circuit to feed | Yes |
| Landlord or freeholder permission | Usually needed, panels are mounted | Not for the unit, it’s an appliance |
| Maintenance requirements | Panel cleaning, occasional checks | Battery care, firmware, charge cycles |
| What limits capacity and output | The 800 VA cap and the DC panel limits | Battery size, and what you can carry |
| Earns export income | Only via a certified installation | No, an island unit never exports |
Two rows deserve expanding. On backup power, a plug-in solar device is worthless in a cut, which surprises people who assume solar means resilience. On heavy loads, a compliant device is capped at 800 VA and 3.5 A, so it offsets background draw rather than running a cooker.
Which One Fits Your Power Needs
A flat with a balcony, and someone home in the day. Plug-in solar. Daytime occupancy converts generation into savings.
A flat with a balcony, and nobody home until seven. Harder. Plug-in solar still works, but more of the output leaves for the network unpaid. Read our guide to self-consumption and payback first.
You want the lights on when the street goes dark. A battery unit, sized for the loads you care about. Plug-in solar can’t do this.
A shed, allotment or garden office with no supply. A battery unit with folding panels, or a small off-grid solar system. See our garden office and shed guide.
Camping, festivals, vans, market stalls. Mobile power needs point one way only.
Both. Sensible, and common in Germany. The plug-in device trims the daytime bill while the battery covers cuts and trips away. Just don’t wire one into the other and expect the pair to stay inside the plug-in route.
Ask one question before you buy
Do you want to spend less on electricity, or do you want electricity in places and at times when there isn’t any? The first points at plug-in solar, the second at a solar-powered generator. If you answer both, buy for the energy needs that annoy you more often.
What Each One Costs, and What It Gives Back
The government’s reported estimate for plug-in solar is £70 to £110 a year, and a balcony sits at the low end, because the upper figure models a 30 degree south-facing array rather than a near-vertical railing. Expected retail pricing runs from £400 to £600. Set the high initial cost against that annual figure and the payback is long.
A battery unit has no equivalent figure, because on its own it generates nothing. Buy one for capability rather than savings. It can shave a little off a bill if you charge on a cheap overnight rate and discharge at peak, though the round trip loses energy both ways and the cells age. Which carries the lower upfront cost depends on the models you compare, and prices here move a lot.
Neither is a long-term power supply for a whole property.
One honest note. No plug-in solar device has been assessed as compliant on the ENA Type Test Register yet, so today only one of them is something you can actually buy and use.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between a solar generator and a plug-in solar system?
A solar generator, meaning a battery unit with a panel, stores energy and supplies only the devices plugged into it. A plug-in solar system has no battery and feeds its output into your home’s wiring through a socket, reducing what you import.
What are the disadvantages of a solar generator?
Capacity is limited by what you can lift, the battery degrades with every charge cycle, charging from folding panels is slow, and it saves nothing unless the energy going in was free or cheap. It does nothing about everyday household energy demands, because the house stays on the meter.
What are the downsides of plug-in solar panels?
Output is capped at 800 VA, there’s no storage, anything you don’t use immediately is exported for nothing, and it stops during a power cut. You also need mounting rights, a DNO notification, and a device carrying an IPS compliance declaration and a verified ENA listing.
Do I need to tell my DNO about a portable power station?
Not while it stays off the network. The duty in ESQCR regulation 22 attaches to a source of energy that may be connected in parallel with the distributor’s network, and an island unit isn’t. A model with an AC feed-in function is a different case, and we’d notify.
Can a solar generator power a house?
It can power selected appliances you plug into it, for as long as the battery lasts. It won’t back-feed your consumer unit or meet whole-property energy requirements unless it’s installed as a fixed system with a changeover switch, an electrician’s job.
Which is better, a solar generator or a plug-in solar device?
Neither is better in general. If your goal is a lower electricity bill in a flat that can’t take a roof array, plug-in solar is the tool. If it’s power where there’s no socket, or power backup when the supply fails, a solar generator is.