PV FIT. Export all surplus and charge EV at night ?

If you have a 2nd name on the electricity bill, you are allowed €400.

I would say so See https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2023-06-13/367/

Just following up on this. Is there any point to getting a charger with solar integration so as it seems you can make more by exporting at FIT rates and charge then at night or even the EV rates during the 2/4 hour windows overnight? And never mind that the solar integrated chargers cost more as well?

+1.

SSE Airtricity pay FIT at €0.24/kWh I currently have a night rate of €0.21c so yes is the simple answer there. You are also giving the grid a clean boost during the day and using excess wind at night so it's quite good for the environment also. These figures could change overnight though so I'd always keep the option to charge off solar even if it was never used

With regard to taxation. To make €200 at 24c/kWh you would need to export 833kWh in a year. Having a second person on your bill raises this allowance to €400 or 1,666kWh. I don't have solar, so would these figures be possible? One option to avoid tax is to keep an eye on what you are exporting and, once you come close to whichever of the above figures relate to you, start charging up your car

I think it's difficult to get into the perfect sweet spot with solar savings as rates can change over time . I have solar plus 10kWh battery storage. I try to mop up most of the savings by charging the batteries at night rates and using stored charge during the day to avoid as much as I can using the expensive grid day rates. It works most of the time for me. The rule used to be to use as much of the generated solar yourself although that has changed with Fit rates (21c for me)greater than night time rates. Being taxed on Fit income (excess of eur 400 in my case) deters sending too much back to the grid but at in my case the tax is minimal.

How does the tax work exactly? The higher rate of tax being 40%, if you already pay that on your income, are you effectively getting 12.6c (60% of 21c) or is it more complicated than that?

Last May was very sunny I do recall

I have my PV solar setup installed since early August last year - so almost 10 months. My house is 100% reliant on electricity for water/heating (no oil/gas) and I've still managed to export approx 2250 units in the 10 months. My figure for May so far is also about 450 units. December and January were very poor obviously (December only 8, January 46).

It's hands down the best thing I've ever done in my house. For the current billing period (since early April) I am in credit to the tune of about €30 and that includes charging a new ID4 nightly. I have the Zappi charger too but for the reasons already mentioned in this thread I haven't bothered much with charging from solar, I only tried it a couple of times for curiousity sakes. Instead, I plug it in every night and it charges in the 2am-6am window for 7.5c a unit.

Could charging the batteries every night shorten their usable life ? Presuming that their performance dwindles after xxxx no. of cycles or are they more likely to need replacement due to ageing ?

I'd argue there's moral value to gain in using electricity produced hyper-locally (from solar) even if it costs an extra few cent per kWh.
Of course exporting during the day when demand is higher sounds good, but is there now massive demand between 2am and 4am because everyone is charging cars during the cheapest charging window (and is that demand being met by excess wind or are we falling back on gas powered electricity during this middle of the night charging window).

This excess wind at night thing, where is the data for this coming from?

35% of electricity generated last year was from wind, which means the majority of the remaining 65% was coming from fossil fuels.

It's quite breezy today, especially compared to on and around the 20th, when there was almost no wind at all, day or night, for 3 days straight, so even on a breezy day like today, there doesn't appear to be any time of day or night when there is an excess of wind generation that needs soaking up.

An increase in load at night simply means burning more gas, as there is no wind excess except possibly on a few exceptional occasions.

An excess of wind generation would by definition mean that more energy was being generated than there was demand from the grid for. It's a nonsense to claim more wind energy is consumed during the day than at night - it's usually all consumed. What changes most between day and night is how much gas is burned, or energy imported, to make up the difference between wind generation and actual demand.