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Charging at home with solar is absolutely amazing. We used to wake up to an empty tank and drive on fumes and prayers to the overpriced Shell down the street. N
by rekoros 5y ago
Charging at home with solar is absolutely amazing. We used to wake up to an empty tank and drive on fumes and prayers to the overpriced Shell down the street. Now we wake up to a full tank, every time!
- ketamine__ 5y agoAre you comparing gasoline and solar?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- koolba 5y ago> Now we wake up to a full tank, every time! Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you charge a car via solar at night?
- nyx 5y agoMaybe this is a dumb answer, but batteries?
- politician 5y agoThey work the night shift.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sathackr 5y agoMaybe they work nightshift. Or more likely as with most solar systems they are "grid-tie" Your electric meter essentially runs backwards during the day when you are selling excess power from your panels to the utility. Then you "buy" it back at night when you are drawing more power than your solar panels make.
- javchz 5y agoOption A) In a lot of places, you're still connected in the grid. For the sake of argument let's say, you produce 5 Kilowatt-hour in the day, and only used 2 kWh. The other 3 kWh are sold to the grid in a positive balance for you. So at the end of the month, the bill is: What you consumed to the grid in the night - what you added in the day, so depending on the sunlight you got, there could be months where you pay 0 in electricity bills. Option B) A lot of 18650 batteries and a inverter connected to your home, like the tesla powerwall.
- rekoros 5y agoBatteries is certainly an option, but we sell power to the utility (PG&E) during the day at a high price per kWh and use it at night (between 2300 and 0700) to charge our car (and run the washer) at a low price per kWh.
- SigmundA 5y agoNet metering.
- amluto 5y agoBy buying an EV charger from a solar company? The solar inverter vendors sell them, and I don’t see the point for most uses. (For power-limited off-grid applications, a smart charger makes a lot of sense. That’s a niche use case.)
- dehrmann 5y agoSolar and EVs seem orthogonal, here.
- rekoros 5y agoAll I'm saying - on top of the convenience of not having to get to a gas station in the morning, we also don't have to directly pay for the fuel, because our house generates enough power to charge the car.
- dehrmann 5y agoI know that's what you meant, but it's also a little silly because electric is fungible. If you hadn't bought the PV system, you could have invested the money in the stock market and (potentially) gotten "free" charging that way, too. The EV/PV logic makes sense on the surface, but it's less interesting when there's a stable electric grid and market.
- rekoros 5y agoIt’s nice to imagine that we drive around by using the energy we captured from the sun “for free” (vs taxing the planet) - I think that’s the more important aspect of cost, than currency per se.