Solar JUST for the EV ?

Anyone ever try and do a Solar panel Just for the Car Ev plug in ?

I park in a sunny spot at work, only 1 small 120V outlet in the garage where I am not suppose to park.

I was wondering if anyone had a portable Solar panel that can be hooked up to the EV car to charge that way ?

Also if anyone has a small Solar set up at home to charge during the day (while you are at work) and store the electricity to use for charging at night ?

I am waiting for the 2015 to come out (hopefully GREEN color) before I buy.

Since a typical, single panel provides about 250 watts, and since an average sunny day in CA provides 6 - 9 hours of full sun equivalent (season dependent and assuming the panel is perfectly positioned), you're looking at between 1.5 and 2 kwh before system inefficiencies are included. Adding the inverter and charger waste, I'm guessing your net will be between 1 and 1.5 kwh. For a Spark EV, it is 5 - 10% of full charge. And that's the max possible. Any amount of shade, cloud cover, or panel mis-alignment will knock that down. So, it may not be a practical solution.
-Corwin

tigger19687 said:

Anyone ever try and do a Solar panel Just for the Car Ev plug in ?

I park in a sunny spot at work, only 1 small 120V outlet in the garage where I am not suppose to park.

I was wondering if anyone had a portable Solar panel that can be hooked up to the EV car to charge that way ?

Click to expand...

That is not feasible. First of all you would need an inverter from the DC output of the panel to step it up to at least 110V so the car would notice it was even there, then the amount of power produced would be miniscule. Maybe if you had a 1/4 mile commute.

tigger19687 said:

Also if anyone has a small Solar set up at home to charge during the day (while you are at work) and store the electricity to use for charging at night ?

I am waiting for the 2015 to come out (hopefully GREEN color) before I buy.

Click to expand...

PV solar systems at a home are typically grid-tied, meaning no onsite storage and the electric utility gets the excess during the day.

Local onsite storage requires batteries, lots of them to power a car. A standalone system with enough power to charge an EV is likely to cost more than the car, be eligible for fewer if any rebates or tax credits, and generally be a poor choice.

A better path is to install a system that can produce 80% to 90% of your total household + car charging needs, as a grid-tie system, then sell electricity to your utility during the day at a high rate on a Time Of Use (TOU) billing plan, while charging only at night when the rate is lower.

We took this route, and for our current monthly billing period SoCalEd owes us $125 despite powering our home and car. Of course we have a $1000 tab we ran up in December.

Oh well, it was a good thought anyway.

I can't add Solar to the house, I rent

I guess I should just plug it at work to the 110, same as at the house. That would save a little $

Ford has a similar idea as you do for their C-Max PHEV. Their concept utilizes a portable magnifying canopy that mechanically moves throughout the day to concentrates the photons on the roof mounted solar panel. Of course, that doesn't mean it's practical for you to do on your own or even for them to do on a production model.

https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2014/01/02/let-the-sun-in--ford-c-max-solar-energi-concept-goes-off-the-gri.html

Honestly, if you were committed and the owner/management of parking area was willing, constructing a non-permanent canopy structure out of steel pipe and sand bags is totally do-able. I wouldn't call it cost effective, but it's something I might consider. Personally, I like being different.

You also have to be concerned about theft of the solar panels. It seriously happens.

Out of liability concern the responsible parties would probably require you to hire a licensed contractor to build the structure and possibly a civil engineer to design it.

I recall reading that EVs also need a working connection to ground to activate their charging, which would be another challenge.