Happened to see one of these at the Solar Power International show in Vegas last week:
Can a car cary enough solar panels / Can solar panels carry enough to charge an electric car?
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I don't trust the dash or the status screen (or the online system) too much. They report my mileage as variously 4.5-6.0 miles/kWh, but I just take it as a rough indicator of how carefully I'm picking my route and driving.
I think 50 miles is as far as I've actually gone on one charge; next time I make that trip maybe I'll do loops around the area afterwards until it hits 5% on the dash meter, just to see how far it goes.
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You'd be far better off doing a grid tie system.
Let's say that 30 panel system is 280W panels - that'd be a 8.4kW system.
It'd be probably $27k for a grid tie system (guesstimating $3/W plus $2k for the structure)
I'd guess it'd be another $2K to have it charge a car without grid tie.
So - option 1 - grid tie.
Cost: $27K ($18.9k after credits)
Benefit: shade for tesla/boat/whatever and ~$4k/yr in savings
Option 2 - charge car only on weekends
Cost: $29K ($20.3k after credits)
Benefit: shade for tesla/boat/whatever and ~$1K/year (possibly less) in avoiding cost for charging the car.
Now, you can argue that I'm underpricing electric costs for you (or overpricing) - and it's really $5K/year savings in option 1; or $3K or whatever.
But the ratio of benefits between option1 and option 2 don't change - they're still a ~4:1 ratio that favors doing grid tie.
Why wouldn't anyone go with a ~5 year break even over a ~20 year break even?
BTW a 9kW system is not going to give you 54kwh in 6 hours - even in sunny CA.
It might give you 54kwh over a full day on some days in CA.
But you won't have it pointed directly at the sun for those 6 hours, and you usually won't get full peak power even if you did. The nameplates are under specific test conditions, which are not often seen in real life - I know that on certain cold windy days - or with lots of light reflected from snow/clouds it's possible to do even better than the nameplate, but that's going to be very often.Leave a comment:
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There is always ways to adapt our selves to every situation in life.
A Tesla does not have to be charged daily. The 60 kWh battery will give about 220 miles range. I drive 35 miles round trip Monday thru Friday. I'd have to charge every 6 days or I could even charge every day after work that I still have about 1 1/2 hr. of sun light. This will put back the kWh that I spent on my 35 miles a day. I could fully charge the EV on weekends.
You can get a grid tied solar system also and charge the EV when you come back from work every dayLeave a comment:
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So John I take it you work at night so you can park that EV all day and let it charge?
Real stupid if you do. Smart money builds a Grid Tied System so every watt hour possible is utilized either by you or your neighbor who paid for most of it. Sounds exactly like what Dan would do.Leave a comment:
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Should work fine if you don't use your Tesla to go to work or just park the thing at the house all day.
That is the problem with an EV and using solar to charge it. If the car is not at your home then it has to be somewhere there is a charger where you can plug it in during the daytime otherwise it gets charged at your home at night which is not using the sun.
John95. You have to stop thinking in 2 dimensions and think a little more out of the box.
A Tesla does not have to be charged daily. The 60 kWh battery will give about 220 miles range. I drive 35 miles round trip Monday thru Friday. I'd have to charge every 6 days or I could even charge every day after work that I still have about 1 1/2 hr. of sun light. This will put back the kWh that I spent on my 35 miles a day. I could fully charge the EV on weekends.
You can get a grid tied solar system also and charge the EV when you come back from work every day
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Do you have a GIDmeter? That shows actual remaining capacity of the battery in GID's (Nissan's units of battery SOC) and they are somewhat more accurate. When it says 20% you actually have about 20% energy remaining in the battery. Thus if you charge to 80% and discharge to 40% you have really used up half the battery's capacity, although the Leaf will not let you get below about 10%.
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So John I take it you work at night so you can park that EV all day and let it charge?
Real stupid if you do. Smart money builds a Grid Tied System so every watt hour possible is utilized either by you or your neighbor who paid for most of it. Sounds exactly like what Dan would do.Leave a comment:
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These 30x 300 watt panels generating 9 kWh per hour may charge any EV. That is 54 kWh in 6 hrs. sunny day in California.
Even the Tesla with the giant 100 kWh battery will get more than half of charge or just double this panel setup and get 108 kWh. Just park the car next to the solar panels!
If you can pay $150,000 for the Tesla, can not you pay about $20,000 ~ $25,000 for solar, just to charging your car at your house? Best of all, never buy again a drop of gasoline.
That is the problem with an EV and using solar to charge it. If the car is not at your home then it has to be somewhere there is a charger where you can plug it in during the daytime otherwise it gets charged at your home at night which is not using the sun.
John95. You have to stop thinking in 2 dimensions and think a little more out of the box.Leave a comment:
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30x300_panels.jpg
These 30x 300 watt panels generating 9 kWh per hour may charge any EV. That is 54 kWh in 6 hrs. sunny day in California.
Even the Tesla with the giant 100 kWh battery will get more than half of charge or just double this panel setup and get 108 kWh. Just park the car next to the solar panels!
If you can pay $150,000 for the Tesla, can not you pay about $20,000 ~ $25,000 for solar, just to charging your car at your house? Best of all, never buy again a drop of gasoline.Leave a comment:
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FWIW, That looks potentially interesting to me as well. I'll give it my usual 2+ yrs. or so after rollout before any large, durable goods purchase to see what the daily reality of what early adopters discover, or what competitive products may surface in the mean time, and maybe get an EV capable and suitable to justify my burning desire to fulfill my plans for a largely net zero fuel cost mobility, but it sure as hell won't be cost effective - for me anyway. SWMBO is on board with the idea, but I'm quite sure I'll be able to wring/squeeze/obsess much more range out of an EV charge than she.Leave a comment:
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Fun data point: I have a 2013 Leaf (which spent its first years on lease in Georgia before I bought it used in Los Angeles). It has 11 of the 12 battery life bars still.
When my wife drives it (AC on, braking and accelerating ad lib) she gets ~70 mile range from a full charge.
When I drive it (no AC, regen instead of braking most of the time, seek out routes without hills) I get ~85 miles from a full charge. (These are extrapolations, as we seldom go below 50% charge, and never below 20% charge.)
As for vans... well, light hybrids might be cost-effective in the near future.Leave a comment:
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70 miles is a good reliable range on a new battery. I've gotten 95 miles out of a charge when the car was new, and driven 75 miles from a full charge and gotten home with 15% remaining. So 100 miles with a new battery is doable - but not something you'd want to rely on.
When my wife drives it (AC on, braking and accelerating ad lib) she gets ~70 mile range from a full charge.
When I drive it (no AC, regen instead of braking most of the time, seek out routes without hills) I get ~85 miles from a full charge. (These are extrapolations, as we seldom go below 50% charge, and never below 20% charge.)
As for vans... well, light hybrids might be cost-effective in the near future.Leave a comment:
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70 miles is a good reliable range on a new battery. I've gotten 95 miles out of a charge when the car was new, and driven 75 miles from a full charge and gotten home with 15% remaining. So 100 miles with a new battery is doable - but not something you'd want to rely on.Leave a comment:
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