Balcony Solar Atlas

Balcony Solar Atlas is an independent guide to plug-in, or balcony, solar for homes in the United States. It is meant for renters and homeowners who want to know whether a small plug-in kit is allowed where they live, how such a kit works, and what a rough production and payback estimate might look like.The homepage reports 51 state and District of Columbia pages, with a latest law review dated 1 November 2026. It currently lists ten states with signed plug-in solar laws, six already in effect and four signed to take effect later. Each state page is described as linking primary records, such as statutes, bill records and regulators, and as identifying legal or utility scope. The site notes that a listed law does not mean every product or installation qualifies, and that uncertainty stays visible when sources disagree or a detail is unconfirmed.A calculator estimates yearly production, the share of output used in the home, yearly savings, simple payback and ten-year net savings. You can adjust railing direction, mounting, always-on daytime load, inverter limit, electricity price and kit cost. The model counts only energy used in the home when it is produced and values unused exports at zero. Estimates use typical-year weather for a representative city, not your exact address. Installation work, time-of-use rates and future price changes are outside the default result unless you add them. A payback-by-state table uses the same model for one fixed 800 W scenario across all 51 jurisdictions.Separate guides explain what is in a kit, safety and certification, renter and landlord issues, orientation and shade, batteries, and metering. A guide updated 9 November 2026 explains that an ordinary grid-tied kit stops feeding power during an outage and is not backup power unless the product documents a supported backup function. The state pages and calculator are free to use and do not require a sign-up.