A 3000 W plug in solar kit: why it is not plug and play

What plug and play means

The French solar resource centre photovoltaique.info describes a plug and play kit as a ready to use product that plugs straight into a standard socket, with its output meant only for your own use, without feeding in or selling electricity. It is made for the base load during the day: ventilation, fridge, freezer. The centre adds that with two panels your residual daytime consumption must be higher than the installed power, and that beyond two panels this is rare.

That is why the market and the rules settle around 800 W. The European Commission's Recommendation (EU) 2026/1007 of 30 April 2026 asks member states to remove administrative and regulatory obstacles for balcony solar up to 800 W. France has no official watt limit for plug in kits, and the market uses 800 W.

Plug in solar rules by country

What a socket can carry

The French guide on plug and play kits by SER, Enerplan and ADEME (2023), as summarised by the building trades federation CAPEB in July 2025, says a kit connects to a standard 16 A household socket without new fixed wiring, and that the current it feeds in must stay below 6 A, or between 6 and 8 A with copper conductors of at least 1.5 mm² up to 6 A and 2.5 mm² up to 8 A. At 230 V, 6 A is about 1,380 W and 8 A about 1,840 W. An 800 W kit draws about 3.5 A. A 3,000 W kit would push about 13 A into a circuit that was never designed for it.

photovoltaique.info gives the same warning in plain words: do not overload a socket that may not have been designed for such power, and make sure the wiring is correctly sized.

Check what 800 W produces on your balcony

France: the CACSI at any power

Even without feeding into the grid, a self consumption installation must be declared, preferably on the Enedis portal, whatever its power. The declaration commits you not to feed electricity into the grid, and the maximum power of the installation must not exceed the subscribed power of your supply. Once Enedis accepts the complete declaration, it serves as the self consumption agreement without feed in (CACSI). An old electromechanical meter is replaced by Enedis free of charge.

In the declaration you either attach a certificate of conformity endorsed by Consuel, or you state that the installation was entirely built, assembled and tested in the factory, needed no new fixed circuits on site, has a compliant disconnection device and is connected to a circuit that meets the safety rules of NF C 15-100. A plug and play kit uses this second route. A system that needs new fixed wiring cannot.

Read: declaring a kit in France and Belgium

What a 3 kW system needs instead

Whatever the feed in mode, photovoltaique.info states that the installation must comply with the safety rules in force; the installer sends the form to Consuel, which endorses it within one month at most, sometimes after an inspection visit. If you want to sell your surplus, a full connection request to the grid operator applies instead of the simple declaration. The centre also notes that a plug and play kit cannot sit alongside an installation that sells its surplus, because the buyer cannot be sure the surplus does not come from the kit.

On planning, the centre says a kit is exempt from permission below 3 kWp (15 m²), at most 1.80 m high when placed on the ground and outside protected heritage areas; otherwise a prior declaration of works goes to the town hall. If you have the roof and the budget, it points to a professionally installed system, giving 3, 6 or 9 kWp as typical rooftop sizes.

Read: the balcony solar guide

What 800 W produces in Paris and Lyon

Before reaching for a bigger kit, look at what 800 Wp already gives. The table uses the same PVGIS calculation as our calculator: south at 35 degrees, south vertical on a railing and west vertical. Under the CACSI you commit not to feed electricity into the grid, so a kit sized to your daytime use is worth more than a larger one.

Calculate the yield for your own balcony