There's a lot of excitement recently over the potential of plug-in solar, and how cheap, self-install kits could help households save money. But industry groups in the UK have raised a number of concerns about the safety of these kits and urge consumers to proceed with caution.

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Several industry groups -- including the Electrical Contractors' Association, Electrical Safety First, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and certification bodies NICEIC and SELECT -- have issued a joint warning about the technology, with concerns focused on six areas in particular.

Plug-in solar works by connecting solar panels to a small device called a microinverter. This takes the DC power from the solar panels and uses that to transform the electricity into AC and feed it into the household's supply via a regular household plug that's been plugged into an AC wall outlet.

The amount of power generated isn't going to be large, and there's no storage capability; the idea is that it will help run devices that are plugged in all the time.

The first issue that the industry groups raised was that consuming power is not the same as producing power, and that plug-in solar allows for power to flow in both directions. This could compromise Residual Current Devices (RCDs), electrical safety switches that shut off the power when an electrical leak in a circuit is detected. (In the US, RCDs are known as GFCIs, or Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters.)