Fight climate change from your windowsill.
Meet the Plug-In Solar Kit: Put ultralight panel in sun, plug in to an outlet, and join the solar revolution.
Meet the Plug-In Solar Kit: Put ultralight panel in sun, plug in to an outlet, and join the solar revolution.
❌ Need permission from landlord
❌ Can’t access roof
❌ Can’t take with you if you move
Because most of the world lives in urbanized areas where renting is common, we think this is a problem standing
in the way of solar adoption.
✅ Great for apartments, condos, balconies, back yards and of course rooftops
✅ 2-min setup (see ‘how to install’ below)
✅ No permits needed - it's as low-voltage as any other appliance you plug in
✅ Moving? Unplug it and take it with you.
390 pounds is the equivalent of not driving 500 miles a year.
⬇️ Helps power your fridge, A/C unit or TV with sunlight instead of the gas-powered grid.
Monitor in real-time. Choose from:
If we enable anyone to start small with solar and power some household devices, think how much we can green the grid ourselves.
Quick setup
Condo Friendly
Reduces CO2
Lowers bills
✅ 2 x marine-grade 100W lightweight solar panels
✅ 600W microinverter (supports expansion with another 3 panels)
✅ Power monitor - Wifi + App enabled monitor by default, but LED screen monitor an option if preferred.
TLDR: If there’s no grid, it turns off so as not to shock anyone. Island protection, UL 1741, CA41, auto-off at night, fan. 200W of energy can effortlessly be put into your home’s grid - that’s less than some old TVs used - and will used up by your household’s running devices in the grid - no need to deal with the utility.
It’s a start. It will offset about a 3rd (or 1kWh) of an average apartment’s energy consumption per day. That’s about as much as your fridge, TV and WiFi consume throughout the day. 4.6% - 10% (depending on what’s included) of total US emissions are just these types of loads.
Yes. Around $70 per year - depending on your state, hours of direct sun your panel gets and electricity cost in the grid (if electricity is expensive in your state, you will save more).
In our tests in Northern California it will generate about 1kW per day on average. Your mileage may vary due to location and sun access. We will offer a calculator soon to get more info.
Here are our main suggestions but you can get creative! Let the sunlight inspire you!
No. This is more like a Tesla Solar install for apartment owners. The upside is that whenever you move, you can simply unplug the panels and take them with you!.
No. These panels will only work when the grid is live. They will automatically disconnect if the grid goes out, as is mandated by all utilities in the USA.
No. The electricity created goes straight into your home’s electricity grid, and is used by devices ‘behind your meter’ that are drawing energy consistently, like your fridge, wifi, etc.
In theory, yes. But the permitting process is more complicated, so we’ll leave this up to you. This 200W system designed to be small enough to be consistently used up by devices that are running on your home’s grid during the day, so that it all gets used up and you don’t have to worry about selling back to your utility and the regulation that comes with it.
We don’t give tax advice. But in many cases, yes: this system qualifies for the 30% tax credit. So you can deduct 30% of the system’s cost on your taxes if you qualify.
A Pure-Sine MPPT 600W inverter.
MC4 connectors - so yes. You can expand with most panels out there up to the maximum voltage and amperage.
The dimensions of the panels are 41.1 x 27.2 x 0.11 in, per panel. You can arrange them in your space as you like, as long as you hook them up to each other in series (won’t get up to the necessary voltage for the inverter otherwise).
Original article:
Apartment renters need the landlord’s permission to install anything on their rooftops. This makes installing solar difficult for people who rent. Because most of the world lives in urbanized areas where renting is common, I think this is a problem standing in the way of solar adoption.
An additional speed bump is the complexity of installing solar: regulation around net-metering. Grid-tied systems. Installation permits (even if you do own your property). Getting quotes from different installers. Solar financing. All complex processes inherited from the construction industry which slow down mass private adoption of renewables.
We attempt to bypass both these problems by building a standalone solar power plant on your windowsill, rooftop or back yard with off-the-shelf parts, and discuss the pros and cons of this approach to solar.
A windowsill solar system we install ourselves solves both problems at once: Renters don’t need permission from their landlords to place things on their windowsill and rooftops if it’s not altering the building, and it’s a one-click, direct purchase with no regulation as long as the energy’s used up by your own apartment with constant loads like fridge, wifi, etc (which this one is designed not to be). Two birds with one stone. This makes the solar buying process more like buying a consumer electronic.
Our mission is to make purchasing solar/storage as easy as purchasing any other consumer electronic, as we believe in a bottom-up approach: once renewable energy does not require a professional it will spread as rapidly as other consumer electronics like satellite dishes and window AC units, etc.
Solar as a modular consumer electronic - like satellite dishes and air conditioning? (Satellite Photo by Paweł Czerwiński | Air Conditioner Photo by Chromatograph)
What if decentralized electric generation could be added room by room to a household (like window A/C units)?
If we look to the car, the smartphone, the window A/C unit — these devices spread like wildfire across the globe because they were off-the-shelf products that required no configuration but great benefits. Identical appliances were churned out at an industrial scale for a global audience. They were “plug n play”. Plug n play solar has been around for a while, but has never taken off (probably because behind-the-meter power is still sketchy and poorly understood). The potential for plug n play solar is huge — it could mean cheap, zero-configuration solar energy spreading to consumers at the pace of the smartphone, the car or air-conditioning.
Moving? Take it with you. Roof damage? Never.
Electrician-free. Permit-free. Screwdriver-free.
Make your own energy. Be independent.
Offsets a 3rd of a standard apartment’s CO2 footprint.
Generates energy of around $70 per year.
Free shipping anywhere in the US. You will receive a follow-up email with exact instructions.
Questions or want to say hello? Send to hello@sunboxlabs.com.
Due to popular demand, we have decided to offer grid-tied solar kits with hand-picked and tested components guaranteed to work reliably together, distributed, sold and supported by sunboxlabs. If you’d prefer, you can still order components separately and assemble them yourself. This system is around 5x more powerful than the other ones on the site. We tried to build the best system we possibly could at the lowest possible price.