I tried plug-in solar and loved it—but there’s a catch

Getting solar installed on your roof typically involves weeks of planning and red tape and hiring an installation crew to do the work. I tried a very different option: a plug-in solar panel. Like the name implies, installing it essentially just means plugging it into an outdoor wall yourself. Then power starts flowing back into your house. A single panel, of course, generates a tiny fraction of what you’d get from a full rooftop system. But it’s still a simple way to begin to offset your elec...