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The UK clears the way for plug-in balcony solar panels, letting households plug low-cost panels into a wall socket from 27 August to cut energy bills The UK government said changes to plug and electrical-safety rules will legalize plug-in solar panels from 27 August, allowing flats and rented homes to fit panels on balconies, roofs or outdoor spaces without professional installation. The devices, already common across Europe, connect straight to a mains socket and are expected to sell for around £400, potentially saving up to £110 a year. Ministers cast the move as part of a push to cut reliance on volatile fossil-fuel markets. Analogies Socrates designs the solar house Now in houses with a south aspect, the sun's rays penetrate into the porticoes in winter, but in summer the path of the sun is right over our heads and above the roof, so that there is shade. If, then, this is the best arrangement, we should build the south side loftier to get the winter sun and the north side lower to keep out the cold winds.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book 3, Chapter 8 (Socrates on the ideal house), trans. E. C. Marchant, Loeb Classical Library, 1923. Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. → Bell Labs makes sunlight practical, 1954 On 25 April 1954 Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller and Gerald Pearson unveiled the first practical silicon photovoltaic cell at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, converting about six percent of incoming sunlight straight into electricity. Their small blue wafers were the ancestors of every rooftop and balcony panel that follows, turning the ancient dream of drinking power from the sun into a repeatable piece of hardware. It is the pivot from centuries of solar curiosities to the cheap, mass-produced module a UK renter can now clip to a railing and plug into the wall.
"Milestones: First Practical Photovoltaic Solar Cell, 1954," IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki (ETHW). → The Great Hymn to the Aten The earth becometh light, thou shootest up in the horizon, shining in the Aten in the day, thou scatterest the darkness. Thou sendest out thine arrows (i.e., rays), the Two Lands make festival, [men] wake up, stand upon their feet, it is thou who raisest them up.
The Great Hymn to the Aten (Hymn of praise of Her-aakhuti), attributed to Akhenaten, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge, in Tutankhamen: Amenism, Atenism and Egyptian Monotheism, 1923. Wikisource. → St Francis praises Brother Sun and Brother Fire Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures,
Especially to my worshipful brother sun,
The which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give;
And beautiful is he and radiant with splendor great;
Of Thee, most High, signification gives.
Praised be my Lord for brother fire,
By the which Thou lightest up the dark.
And fair is he and gay and mighty and strong.
Francis of Assisi, "The Canticle of the Sun" (c. 1225), in The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Paschal Robinson, 1906. Wikisource. → Turner, ‘Norham Castle, Sunrise’ J.M.W. Turner dissolves a castle, a river and grazing cattle into pure light, the rising sun a blazing core that floods the whole canvas in luminous blue and gold. Solid forms melt into radiance until the sun’s energy is almost the only subject that remains. It is Romantic painting’s purest hymn to the power a plug-in panel now quietly gathers from a balcony rail.
J.M.W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise (c. 1845), oil on canvas, Tate, London. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. → Van Gogh, The Sower In this June 1888 canvas from Arles, Van Gogh sets a peasant scattering seed against an enormous lemon-yellow sun that fills the sky and gilds the violet furrows below. The sower's ancient labour and the giant disc behind him fuse human work with solar power, a hymn to sunlight as the engine of all growth. The image speaks to the promise behind plug-in solar: sowing small panels now to harvest the sun's free energy at home.
Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, c. 17-28 June 1888, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. → 
