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Kathleen Sullivan of Freeport is a long-time environmental activist and a retired psychotherapist.
Imagine pulling up to Costco or Home Depot, going inside, purchasing a revolutionary device boxed in a large ordinary looking cardboard container, taking it home, unpacking it, setting it outside on a deck or a wall on a bright afternoon, plugging it in to an approved socket, and immediately tapping into energy emitting photons from a star 91.53 million miles away from us! Within minutes your dishwasher, your lights will be powered not by costly fossil fuel energy but by the free energy of the sun. Imagine being able to reduce your utility bill by 20 to 40 percent!
This scenario isn’t magic, it isn’t a technological dream that will take years to bring into fruition.
Up to 4 million households in Germany have purchased that device, called plug-in-solar or balcony solar, and are currently using it in their homes and apartments, successfully offsetting their utility bills, resulting in less economic stress and displacing hundreds of thousands of metric tons of emissions. Recently, by a bipartisan vote, Utah passed legislation to enable people in that state so blessed by sun to use these devices.
We Mainers are outraged and discouraged about our rising utility bills. Between May 2024 and May 2025 those bills rose 36.3%. Rooftop solar is one solution to these soaring costs, but too few people can either afford it or have properties with a strong enough roof or enough exposure to the sun to make it practical or possible. And critically, rooftop solar makes it impossible for renters to access that free gift from the sun. With the purchase of a plug-in-solar device, when renters or homeowners move, the device gets to go along too!
Mainers could have access to plug-in-solar within the year if legislation here in Maine is approved this legislative session. What this bill, LD 1730, does is allow residents to use these devices without the burdensome and expensive interconnection requirements designed for large rooftop arrays. Currently three other states are considering this legislation: New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Market research predicts that if five states pass plug-in solar bills, within five years the price of that 1,200-watt system will plummet from $3,000 to $600.
Tell your local representatives that you want them to support LD 1730, the plug-in solar bill. Twenty environmental organizations support this game-changing bill to make clean renewable energy accessible and affordable for all Mainers.
What’s not to love about cutting our electric bill!
