SACE’s June 2026 white paper, Disproportionate Regulation of Residential Plug-in Solar, examines the differential regulation of residential plug-in solar photovoltaic (PIPV) units and portable gas and diesel generators with respect to lineworker safety. Also known as balcony or “plug-and-play” solar, plug-in solar is a small photovoltaic (PV) system typically under 2 kilowatts (kW) that can be plugged directly into a wall outlet to offset a portion of a household’s energy consumption.
Highlights from the white paper include:
- Documented lineworker fatalities from backfeed are exclusively caused by portable gas/diesel generators, not plug-in solar systems; no lineworker has ever been killed or injured by backfeed from a grid-tied solar inverter.
- Interconnection requirements are the primary barrier to the deployment of plug-in solar in the U.S., not technical safety limitations.
- The annual probability of lineworker electric shock from residential solar islanding—or when part of the grid disconnects from the central supply while local solar panels or generators mistakenly keep running—is less than one in one billion per year.
- Support for plug-in solar is accelerating: As of June 1, 2026, 35 states and Washington, D.C. have introduced plug-in solar legislation, and nine states have passed legislation.
SACE hosted a webinar on the analysis on Wednesday, July 22 at 1 PM ET.
This analysis draws on documented fatality records from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), peer-reviewed electrical injury science, utility industry safety publications, applicable federal inverter safety standards, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded national laboratory barrier analysis, and the emerging bipartisan legislative consensus in multiple states.
