Solar Panels and Electric Cars: Can I Use Solar to Charge My Vehicle?

Reader Contribution by Vikram Aggarwal and Energysage
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Solar panels and electric cars are a match made in heaven ­– when you install a solar energy system on your home, you can use it to both power your home and charge your electric car for emissions-free transportation. The cost of solar is falling rapidly, and companies from Tesla to Nissan are manufacturing electric cars for your daily use. Now, the ability to install a solar PV system large enough to power both your home and your car is an option within reach. But even with incentives and rebates available for both technologies, most homeowners still can’t afford to install solar and buy an electric car at the same time. Luckily, it’s easy to install a solar energy system today that takes your future electricity consumption into account, if you take a few additional factors into consideration.

How Much Electricity Does an Electric Car Use?

Before you can make a decision on the size of your solar energy system, you need to determine how much electricity your car will use in the future. In addition to helping you size your solar energy system, knowing your electric car’s mileage rating can help you quantify the amount that you’re saving by switching to an electric vehicle.

Since electric cars don’t run on gasoline, the EPA rates them based on how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) it takes for the car to drive 100 miles, which they convert to a “miles-per-gallon equivalent” (MPGe). You can use U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Fuel Economy website to find and compare the kWh/100 miles and MPGe ratings for all of the electric vehicles on the market in the United States.

Once you know EPA’s fuel economy rating for your chosen vehicle, you can easily calculate how much extra solar electricity you’ll need to charge your car. Here’s an example: the 2014 Nissan Leaf, an all-electric vehicle, has a combined fuel economy rating of 30 kWh/100 miles – this means the Leaf requires 30 kWh of electricity to drive 100 miles. If you drive 25 miles on an average day, that means you’re using approximately 7.5 kWh of electricity per day – or just over 2,700 kWh of electricity in a given year. This is the “extra” amount of electricity you’ll need your solar energy system to produce.

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