Why An Electric Car With Solar Panels is A Bad Idea

ever wondered how many solar panels are required to run a Tesla I'm Nick author of a book about offgrade solar power join me in this video as I will explore these three scenarios the first is designing an offgrade system that can maintain a daily commute with solar panels and batteries I will show you the diagram and cost involved in the second scenario I will answer the question if it's worth it to add portable solar panels to your parked car the third and last last one will be about charging a Tesla with 5 KW of GD tide solar you might wonder why don't electric cars come with solar panels installed on the roof as you will soon see it's not worth it and it would add extra cost to the car for a very small charge to answer the question in this video you would need 25 KW of solar panels to charge a Tesla on an average day that will be quite expensive so let me show you some alternatives the average American commutes about 40 m per day while I don't personally drive a Tesla data suggests that 4 m per Kow hour is a conservative figure many reach up to 4.5 or even 5 m per kwatt hour however for our calculations we will stick with 4 m per kilowatt hour translating to a daily consumption of 10 KW hours to cover the 40 m commute I will share the DI diagram in the next slide given that most cars are away at work during the day when the most solo power is generated we will design a system to store solar energy and batteries ready to charge your car when you return home to simplify the calculations we will ignore the energy loss of the charge controller and inverter you would need the battery system to store the generated 10 KW hours we will use two 48 volt kwh hour server XX I will give a price estimate of all the components at the end product links will be in the description charging a Tesla requires converting the solar energy into DC power for storage and back to AC power for charging for this I recommend the eg4 3 KW offgrid inverter it's perfect for offgrid setups due to its high solar input voltage and simplicity as a single unit the EG for Advantage lies in a straightforward setup and high solar input voltage it's not made to connect to the main acccity grid so it's an offgrid system only for charging your Tesla or as an emergency backup to power your fridge and a few appliances next we find out the amount of solo power we need to charge our 10 kwh battery with an average of 3.5 Sun hours daily for Houston during the winter I will explain Sun hours in a moment this requires 3,330 WS of solar power but as you already know solar panels do not produce 100% of the rated power it's more like 80% so we divide by8 we become a total of 4,200 WS of solar panels if we use 365 wat solar panels from Sand and solar we need 12 solar panels we have to wire in a six s 2p configuration in order to limit the input voltage to 500 volts that means we will wire six panels in series and then parallel with the other set for a total of 12 panels at 4,380 Watts we also need inline mc4 fuses and Y Branch connectors some people get confused about Sun hours let me explain one Sun hour is 1,000 watts per square meter you should not confuse this with the actual time the sun shines three Sun hours is 3,000 WS per square meter per day or 6 hours of sunshine at 500 watts per square meter Sun hours varies by location and season you can see this when we compare Sun hour charts for Houston and New York showing significant differences these calculations are based on averages some days we prod produce more and some days less don't forget that the aisle consumption of this hybrid inverter will be about, 1500 W hours per day you can reduce the consumption by turning off the unit after charging and it will still charge the batteries with the mppt you can also enable power saving mode which is disabled by default we have to connect the Tesla charger to the AC output on the inverter the output is 3,000 wats so to empty the 10 KW battery into the car at a 3 kwatt charge rate it will take 3.3 hours the charging current will be 25 amps the total cost for this system will be $6,000 you can also use this system during a power outage to power your household appliances is this cost effective the average electricity price in the US is 20 cents per per Kow hour the cost to charge 10 KW hours from the grd is $2 per 40 m charge it will take 3,000 charging Cycles or 8 years to break even assuming the electricity price stays the same do you charge your car with solar let us know in the comments so we can learn from each other there are videos of people adding a portable solar panel to their car they use a solar generator which is a small battery with an inverter let's say you can have 200 WS of solar panels how many miles does this produce it depends on the amount of sunlight let's say it's a typical summer day in Las Vegas with seven Sun hours as you already know 200 WS of solar panels will deliver about 160 WTS these panels will deliver 1,120 W hours or about 1 KW hour since 1 KW hour gives you 4 miles we will get a range of 4 miles in my opinion that's not worth the trouble but it makes for a cool video anyway this is also calculated in favorable situations summertime in Las Vegas with seven Sun hours in reality you will get less than four miles do you like the content of this video so far subscribe to the channel to keep updated whenever new videos are uploaded the next setup describes a great tied solar system with solar panels on the roof of the home the average sore installation for American Homes is 5 kW equating to roughly 14 panels at 365 wats each the standard Tesla Model has a 60 KW hour battery on an average sunny day with 3.5 Sun hours a 5 KW hour solar array can generate around 14 kwatt hours of electricity given that 1 KW hour can drive a car for 4 miles a household with such a solar setup can expect to add approximately 56 Mi of driving range each day this figure however is an average actual daily output may vary with weather conditions producing less energy on cloudy days and potentially more on sunnier days to fully charge a Tesla with a 60 KW battery using a 5 Kow solar array would take roughly 4.3 days a assuming an average production of 14 kwatt hours daily a great tide solar system will be cheaper especially if you have net metering share how you charge your electric vehicle in the comments if you found this video helpful give it a like and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Cleversolarpower

Views: 10,954

Keywords: diy solar ev charging station, solar panel for electric car, off grid ev charging, How many solar panels to charge an electric car, tesla, solar car charging station, Electric Car With Solar Panels

Id: o5fGwQykbRw

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2024