As of today - 27/08/2026, plug in solar is legal in the UK.

And I intend to run an experiment...

As a homelabber, I am keen to try and offset my homelab use as much as possible. Whilst I relish the thought of being able to go off-grid with a home battery pack, and a 'real' solar installation the thought of shelling out £10-£13k for the privilege doesn't appeal, especially when the payback is so long.

So, for ~£200 I am undertaking an experiment and installing a single 450w solar panel on the side of my house (as I don't have the means to install on the roof myself, and paying 300% the price of the kit defeats the purpose of the experiment) to see if I can reduce my base load during sunlight hours.

My total household base load runs at circa 300-350w, which includes my proxmox node and networking appliances.

I am looking to get this together using one of ecoflow's Stream micro inverters (https://uk.ecoflow.com/products/ecoflow-stream-microinverter-wn?variant=54178925740371) by the end of this week and will capture my results through grafana.

After a month, I'll post back up and reveal what I have learned.

Note: Undertake at your own risk, I am not responsible for anything that may happen as a result of trying this for yourself.