Viable Domestic Renewable option for EV car charging?

isnottheword

As per thread title, is there a viable domestic renewable option for home charging of an electric vehicle right now?

quentingargan

Nope. I presume you mean Financially viable. I have solar PVs and an EV, but I am in on an old scheme that pays me for power exported. So I get 9c for exporting during the day, and pay 9c to use off-peak power to charge my car at night. It is best to charge your car off-peak at night, both environmentally and economically. The bit that is missing is a payment for surplus power exported to the grid during the day. Coming soon, we are constantly being told...

isnottheword

Thanks for clarifying Quentin. Is this going to be like broadband where we get left behind and have to play catch up?

EV's and renewables bring all sorts of opportunities and challenges. There's also the aspect of vehicle to grid which is being explored elsewhere.


As it's patently clear there's going to be a massive shift to EV (next generation ranges with 100%+ increases on the way within 2 years), the whole promotion structure for renewables should shift to domestic - rather than handing taxpayers money over to large scale developers.

quentingargan

isnottheword wrote: »

the whole promotion structure for renewables should shift to domestic - rather than handing taxpayers money over to large scale developers.

Some 3GW of large solar parks queueing up to get onto the grid as soon as a tariff is introduced. The lobbyists are all pushing for 25 acre solar parks, not domestic or even industrial rooftops. A conference for the industry next month in the Aviva had the following promotional blurbl

Are you prepared for the next big European solar market opportunity?

With a new subsidy for solar expected to be announced in the next 6 months and a project pipeline of well over 3GW and growing, now is the time to look for your next opportunity, and that opportunity is the Republic of Ireland.


Can't see this pushing 3kw systems on domestic rooftops..

Slow charging an EV at ~20% rated PV panel output would accommodate most setups for minimum import. AFAIK there are no proportional controllers available for this purpose yet.
I'm not a fan of the vehicle to grid. Batteries are consumables, I'd want control of it's life cycles. I can't see them paying a fair price for the wear and tear not to mention the nuisance of reduced capacity with early aging. It'd have us all buying more battery than we need, more weight, more car etc....

[Edit]: Besides it'll always cost you more to put energy into a battery than to take it out. Most chargers are ~80% efficient peak at a rated load and can be down to less than 1% sometimes at low load/idle, batteries will lose 5% to 20% to efficiency too.

Easy get double the range... Lose half the weight. I have to question the engineering decision of certain EVs with all glass roofs and gull wings....

isnottheword

quentingargan wrote: »

Can't see this pushing 3kw systems on domestic rooftops..

Fairly predictable. This is Ireland after all. There won't be any kickbacks from promoting micro-gen. :-(

Sir Liamalot wrote:

I'm not a fan of the vehicle to grid. Batteries are consumables, I'd want control of it's life cycles. I can't see them paying a fair price for the wear and tear not to mention the nuisance of reduced capacity with early aging. It'd have us all buying more battery than we need, more weight, more car etc....

That's a fair point. Had not considered the wear and tear aspect. Nissan involved in a V2Grid trial according to this...

air

A charging rate of 20% of peak PV generation capacity wouldn't be low enough to avoid import in Ireland on an average day outside of summer.

Agreed,
There's no ideal device for the application that I know of. Resistive loads are one thing but sophisticated electronics are very difficult to throttle.