In my case, yes, trees block the roof too much so the solar companies who jump all over me at Lowes call and say, "sorry, not interested". For a generic home owner who can do solar, that's where I wanted to point out the case where having solar for the purpose of charging an EV doesn't work without batteries if the EV is only home when it's dark out."This would seem to be the case at first glance. But without a battery, especially in winter, you get in your EV, drive away in the dark. Work for the day. Drive home and into your garage in the dark. No solar charging benefit at all. With a battery storage system, you can store the daytime energy and then charge your EV when you get home. But how many cycles does the battery last? And I know for sure it's not forever, having worked for several semiconductor companies who sold charger chips. All batteries have a lifetime."This would seem to be the case at first glance. But without a battery, especially in winter, you get in your EV, drive away in the dark. Work for the day. Drive home and into your garage in the dark. No solar charging benefit at all. With a battery storage system, you can store the daytime energy and then charge your EV when you get home. But how many cycles does the battery last? And I know for sure it's not forever, having worked for several semiconductor companies who sold charger chips. All batteries have a lifetime.
At 40 or 50 cents/kWh I can't imagine a solar + battery system won't pay itself off in 5 years maybe less. We have a couple EVs and solar + battery system; both EVs are nearly 100% solar powered.
When considering an ICE car where you look at the cost of a blown up engine, I would not just look at the battery pack of an EV but also the drive units (motors). You can find many, many videos out there with Uber drivers who bought a Model 3 and after 3 years have 200k miles on them and in their cost spread sheet have replaced the motor 3 times and battery pack once. While in warranty, that's not a problem except the car companies see the high miles, find out that the car was used for commercial use and then deny a warranty claim. Oops. $22k for you, sir.
I thought your reason for not using Solar was trees blocking all or most of your best line of site?
If that is not the case and you really are staying in that home 'forever' you really have the one of the best cases for going Solar.
Statistics: Posted by Jack FFR1846 — Fri Mar 01, 2024 5:10 pm — Replies 108 — Views 6889