Between 2020 and 2026 pluginsolar has developed fantastically in Germany. From a niche product used by nerds in a grey area to a product category with a recognized standard and broad adoption. This was not foreseeable and happened in a contested space between users, tenants and landlord, standards authorities and many different actors from civil society, industry and government. First ideas for something like PIPV appeared as early as the mid 1990s. But it needed until the end of 2010s until the first products appeared. From 2018 I was part of this development, first as a user, then as part of a working group of our local energy company and later as founder and member of the board of the Balkon.Solar e.V. We can either call it PIPV, short for plug-in-pv or plug-in-solar. Other names include Balconsolar as in the beginning most systems were attached to balconies. Definition  The core PIPV is one solar panel, connected by cable to a micro inverter. This micro inverter feeds the power into a socket – thus plug in – and consumers in the house use this power first. This system is portable, in the sense that the consumer can unplug it at one […]