What happened to Illinois’ plug-in solar bill and does it have a future
here?
[June 27, 2026]
By Nikoel Hytrek and UIS Public Affairs Reporting (PAR)
A bill to make solar power more accessible to renters and others who
face barriers to the alternative energy source stalled in the Illinois
Senate, but it’s likely to return in the fall veto session because
lawmakers like the idea of helping residents with their electric bills.
Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar, allows people to install
small solar panel systems that can be plugged into normal wall outlets
for personal use. Instead of a rooftop, the panels could be set up on a
balcony, in a yard, or on a porch or patio.
“I think lawmakers really see this as an opportunity to give folks a way
to have more control over their power bills. I think also, frankly,
people just think this is cool,” Kavi Chintam, campaign manager for
Illinois at Vote Solar, told Capitol News Illinois.
Rooftop solar has been increasingly adopted in Illinois, with more than
130,000 households choosing to install panels as of 2025. Chintam said
plug-in solar is a great opportunity to expand access to the technology.
“The rooftop solar industry in Illinois has been so successful and has
actively helped people lower their energy bills,” she said. “The group
that is left out of that, of course, are renters and folks that don’t
have access to their roofs.”
The biggest roadblocks to passing the bill in Illinois were concerns
about safety, and further negotiations will revolve around specific
language regarding that issue.
Lawmakers wanted to observe how other states handled the issue first,
Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet, said in an interview. She sponsored the
Senate version of the bill, which stalled in April.
Utah was the first state to adopt the technology, and Ventura said
Illinois legislators were relying on that bill as a model for Illinois’
version. Now that eight other states have passed bills to allow plug-in
solar, she said Illinois has a better framework to work with.
Addressing safety concerns
“Everyone loves the concept,” Ventura told Capitol News Illinois.
“That’s the good news about this, is that nobody is opposing the
concept. It really comes down to making sure the safety is there for
everyone, and we want to make sure the language addresses everyone’s
safety concerns.”
The safety question boils down to two main areas: safety for people who
work on the electric lines and safety for residents.
Ventura said a big concern for utilities and labor unions was making
sure the energy generated by small plug-in solar systems can’t travel
back to the grid during a power outage — a phenomenon called
backfeeding. The danger would come from a lineworker touching a line
they believe is depowered.
In the original bill language, there was a carveout for low-wattage
plug-in solar systems, between 400-1,200W, that would have allowed
people to connect certified systems with little oversight.
Advocates for the bill argued that low-wattage systems didn’t need to
meet national code requirements or have special permissions because they
generate less energy than many home appliances use.
“The smaller systems are able to just immediately be plugged in by
people without needing landlord permission or any changes to wiring,
because these are so small,” Chintam said. “They would still need to be
certified and would still need to have safety precautions like
preventing backfeeding and having an automatic shut off.”
Without the carveout, Chintam said, residents would likely have to wait
for national rules to change and they wouldn’t be able to benefit from
their safety-certified solar systems until 2029 at the earliest.
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The carveout was a sticking point for lawmakers, labor and utilities.
More than 30 other states have considered plug-in solar bills, and the
carveout language was treated differently in each one.
“So we decided to hold our bill to see how those other states’ come
about,” Ventura said. “We are now researching what language moved, what
language didn’t move, and trying to create model legislation that we
will file or amend in veto session.”
Safety testing & European use
UL Solutions, a branch of a larger historical organization that tests
and certifies the safety of new products, established a framework for
testing, standardizing and certifying plug-in solar systems for safety.
Those standards were new this spring and are still being developed, so
lawmakers didn’t know at the time how they would apply to the language
Illinois used.
As for the safety of the systems within the home, advocates point out
that plug-in solar uses the same technology rooftop solar does, but on a
smaller scale. They also gesture toward countries like Germany, where
plug-in solar panels are abundant and people haven’t reported problems.
The systems are widespread in Europe, with 25 countries having legalized
them. The European electric system and how much voltage its outlets are
designed to handle is slightly different from America’s, so there’s a
minor conversion to make.
“This is where the example of what has happened in Europe is very
relevant,” Nathan Phelps, the managing director of Vote Solar Regulatory
Advocacy Hub, told Capitol News Illinois. “So at their level of 800W
that can be plugged in, they have, last I checked, no examples of safety
issues at that level. And so doing that conversion to the US, that’s
392W (that can be plugged in).”
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an organization in the Southeast
that promotes clean energy, released a report last week examining the
safety of plug-in solar compared to commonly used diesel-powered
generators, and found that plug-in solar systems perform better.
“Safety concerns have come up in various states and more or less the
states that have passed the plug-in solar bills have determined that the
safety concern is not significant enough in order to prohibit plug-in
solar,” Phelps said.
The future looks bright
Ventura said plug-in solar will likely be revisited in the fall because
lawmakers are excited about expanding solar to more people.
“The chair was willing to hear the bill, even in the end, when there was
a little bit of disagreement on whether we have a carveout or not,” she
said. “The chair was still willing to hear the bill, and he was
surprised that I was saying ‘let’s wait.’”
All of the stakeholders have been to the table to discuss the broad
strokes of the bill, so the only remaining conversations will deal with
specifics.
“We’re excited that other states have passed this legislation and given
us the road map to getting it passed here in Illinois,” she said.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |
