I'm driving on sunshine (whooah)!

I cannot give you any figures, don't have them. Plugged one of our two EVs in many days last summer, but only got system in end of June. Finished car solar charging about end Sept or early October. Most was about 70kms, often 50kms or less.

Our system is modest, 4.1kWp with an Eddi and a 4kWh battery. But amount of grid electricity usage by day has been low since we got system, even during the winter. Even with 2 cars each doing about 18K/year we are still in credit of about €90 as of the last bill at start of April. Granted, like everyone we got the €600 Government giveaway. Almost all our car charging has been at home on a great night rate, rarely needing to fast charge except on odd England and Belfast trips.

Location I would think makes a huge difference. I live about 20kms from the coast as the crow flies in the South East. While we have better weather than a lot of the country, down at the coast you often have wall to wall sunshine all day when we don't. The fair weather cumulus clouds and unsettled cumulo nimbus clouds usually build up over land by day, so on the southern coast the sun being on the south of land is not obstructed by clouds.

I would guess if living on southern or South eastern coasts I could add a fair chunk to my production..

I think overall the south of the country would have about 10% more irradiation than the north, but I understand local variations.

Great idea about the tracking..

It's the DLS-W stick that I have. I had the newer S3 one but you can't do this. Have a look over at the automation thread on renewable energies.

The beauty in grid feedin priority is that the battery will still discharge, so if the solar drops down or you need some additional power it will work as normal.

It's an old model. Put a post up on the buy & sell thread over there or have a look for a used one.

For me I am rarely home during the day so most of my charging has been on night rate in April.

I should be able to get a little extra in the evenings soon with the longer daylight hours.

It's in the manual on page 38-39. See here - https://www.ginlong.com/uploads/file/Solis_Manual_RHI(3-6)K_5G_ENX_V1,5.pdf

Load - Grid - Battery

vs Self-Use which is

Load - Battery - Grid

Good thread. First time I have looked at solar contribution to car. Unfortunately with the DC battery, I don't think I can figure out exact figures, as the Zappi thinks that the battery contribution is from the grid.

April Zappi figures

293kWh from solar,

131 from grid (59 in one day)

I suspect that nearly half the grid figure is originally solar but via the system battery.

Just had a look at the stats on my HA for last 30 days:

89kWh of Solar

115kWh of Night Rate (€0.095) into the car

Less than 50%, but my wife's wfh days and sunshine did not coincide well. Also, reckon I'll significantly up that number with the tip garnered on this thread about changing to Grid Feed in mode in the middle part of the day.

So overall consumption of 204kWh, for about 1200km distance covered. Total marginal cost 115kWh x €0.095 = €11. That's just about 1c a km. Hope to bring that down further though.

Am at home alone today, off to work shortly. Stupidly charged my car to 100% last night and the sun is continuous here this afternoon. Have dishwasher and washing machine on, had a very long shower to empty tank an hour ago and looks like will be exporting soon again.

Any other suggestions? I think turning on a 3kW heater would not be appropriate..😁

Unfortunately not, on gas.

It's nice to give a bit back occasionally, doing my bit of green washing...☺️

Had a quick look to figure out what my sunshine driving is in terms of driving kilometers. Based on a rough guess of 15% losses and overall consumption since new, roughly 650km of my driving since I got my Model 3 in mid-March has been from solar PV.

Same, financially speaking probably better to export; however, I'd prefer to use here as much as possible. My goal is limit grid use and keep costs down but it's a balancing act.

The order in feed-in priority is load, grid, battery vs. self-use mode which is load, battery, grid.

The battery will still discharge if there's a load and low generation e.g. turn on the kettle and only have 1000W generation.

If you've the car plugged in and running on ECO+ mode, it would stop if the export wasn't sufficient and yes the inverter would still dump that <1400W out the door. I've not setup the automation part of this yet so just "manually" changing it with a switch in HA that sends the request to the inverter to change the mode, and then back again when I switch it off.

I've an eddi and zappi so have a bit of logic to figure out for an automation on this.