Energy ministers have agreed to develop a pathway for plug-in solar and batteries, technology that could extend the benefits of household renewables to people locked out of rooftop systems.

Consumer energy advocates have called on federal and state governments to make plug-in solar and batteries legal to use in Australia within 10 months, following last week’s news that clearing a path for the technology known in Europe as ‘balcony solar’ has been put on the national political agenda.

A meeting of federal and state energy ministers on Friday agreed to explore pathways to support the safe deployment of plug-in consumer energy resource (CER) devices in Australia, promising to identify measures that enable its safe use and report back later this year on next steps.

As Renew Economy has reported, this is welcome news, because portable solar and batteries are proving to be a major consumer energy game-changer in parts of Europe and the US, where similar regulatory and safety hurdles have been addressed and overcome.

The main attraction of the technology – which currently can be bought in Australia, but not legally plugged in – is that it is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to extend the consumer energy revolution to the around 30 per cent of households currently locked out of traditional rooftop PV and wall-mounted batteries.

Portable solar and batteries can be, literally, plugged into power points to help offset the cost of........

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