Renewable home charging

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Discussion

forrestgrump

Original Poster:

1,539 posts

190 months

Tuesday 24th May 2022
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Mahalo my dudes. We have an EQC at home and while the Mrs gets free charging at her work, she’s currently on baby duty and the car still does a lot of miles so the cost has shot up dramatically. We’re also assuming this won’t last forever. The front of the house is full sun all day, and we’re high up and over to the North West and the wind is also insane.

I’ve tried Googling this to no avail. Are there any solar panels or wind turbines that I can just mount somewhere, that come with a cable to plug straight into the car or my existing charge cable, probably via a box or something, It seems really simple but not something on offer? Electrics are super not my area so any answers please pretend I’m 6 years old.

It blows a gale here all day at least twice a week so even if it’s just a small one that trickle charges and takes hours I’d happily just leave it sat spinning and doing the job. The car does mileage but all at once and is sat up quite a lot of the time.

kambites

67,461 posts

220 months

Wednesday 25th May 2022
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I think any "off grid" solar system will do it, although there are companies which specialise in specific solar EV chargers. For example:

https://offgridinstaller.com/off-grid-ev-charging/

You need a fairly sizable area of panels to get a usable charge rate though. To get 3kw (ie granny charger rate) in bright sunlight you'd need about 20 square meters of panels. That's roughly the area of a single garage roof.


To get the same power from wind generation on a windy day, you'd need a turbine of about 4m diameter, so pretty chunky.

Edited by kambites on Wednesday 25th May 09:18

ashenfie

704 posts

45 months

Wednesday 25th May 2022
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No really something on offer. The standard solution is solar to power the house and EV in a Grid + Solar configuration . Thats a lot to do with the Panels not having the ability to provide the minimum power reliability. There is no such thing as a trickle charge with EVs as they have a minimum charge rate, some EV will require less than others but you need to do your research.

Edited by ashenfie on Wednesday 25th May 11:25

CantDecide

215 posts

201 months

Wednesday 25th May 2022
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We have a standard solar (16 panels) plus battery install. SE facing so reasonable exposure to the sun. This feeds the house/batteries with excess solar heating hot water and feeding the grid.

The panels can produce 4KWh when the sun is good, so charge our e208 when the for about 4/5 hours when the sun is out (and the take off to ensure the batteries get charged). The car is charging via 3pin at 2-3 KWh so OK using the slow charging method. You would need at least double the panels to support 7KWh charging so it really depends on how many miles you need to add per day and how often the car is sat idle during the day.

gangzoom

6,251 posts

214 months

Wednesday 25th May 2022
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forrestgrump said:
It blows a gale here all day at least twice a week so even if it’s just a small one that trickle charges and takes hours I’d happily just leave it sat spinning and doing the job.
From what I understand wind turbines only really make sense when the blades are scaled up, even though its windy most of the time in the UK small domestic wind turbines generate very little, and larger ones require planning permission and land etc.

Solar works fine on a trickle charge, we've used barely any grid electricity to charge the EV over the last 4 weeks.

anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 25th May 2022
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Most EV Onboard chargers will run (ie charge the traction battery) down to 1.5kW approx, so this is the smallest amount of power your solar array must make for any charging to occur, and is only adding range at a rate of 3 to 4 miles per hour. This can work if the car is sat around at home for long periods, ie you work at home for example, but isn't much use otherwsie.

Thanks to the availability of cheap (er) rate overnight traffis and "agile" energy supply deals, you may find it is better to run your house of the panels during the day so as to avoid ANY expensive rate 'lecy buying from the grid, and just charge you car from the grid overnight. 1.5kW is a decent amount of power for a house, so a smaller panel array can be made better use off

ashenfie

704 posts

45 months

Wednesday 25th May 2022
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gangzoom said:
From what I understand wind turbines only really make sense when the blades are scaled up, even though its windy most of the time in the UK small domestic wind turbines generate very little, and larger ones require planning permission and land etc.

Solar works fine on a trickle charge, we've used barely any grid electricity to charge the EV over the last 4 weeks.
10000W Vertical Axis Permanent Magnetic Levitation Wind Turbine Would work but really need a battery to store energy to be really practical as you want to collect energy ready for a fast change

OutInTheShed

7,368 posts

25 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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Max_Torque said:
Most EV Onboard chargers will run (ie charge the traction battery) down to 1.5kW approx, so this is the smallest amount of power your solar array must make for any charging to occur, and is only adding range at a rate of 3 to 4 miles per hour. This can work if the car is sat around at home for long periods, ie you work at home for example, but isn't much use otherwsie.

Thanks to the availability of cheap (er) rate overnight traffis and "agile" energy supply deals, you may find it is better to run your house of the panels during the day so as to avoid ANY expensive rate 'lecy buying from the grid, and just charge you car from the grid overnight. 1.5kW is a decent amount of power for a house, so a smaller panel array can be made better use off
Unfortunately, for much of the year there is a big gap called 'the evening' between solar generation and cheap electricity.
This is when most homes use a lot of their energy, and why it's peak rate time.

The reality is, people with solar panels still buy a fair bit from the grid, however much of their lives they devote to running their washing machines when the sun's out.

To get a fair picture, people need to look at their power use, hour by hour through the year, then look at what panels will produce, how many hours, however many days a each month.