Charging your EVs at home using the free electricity generated by rooftop solar panels dramatically decreases your carbon footprint. But that’s not the only thing installing a solar EV charging system can positively impact. The cost savings associated with using solar energy for home EV charging can be significant, not to mention long-lasting – the average solar panel comes with up to a 25-year warranty.
Though the initial investment required to install solar at home can be high – and it’s worth noting that there exist numerous rebate and bursary schemes to help you lower these costs – the savings you make charging with solar instead of grid power help offset this investment in the long run.
In this EV Chargers article on whether solar EV charging can save you money, we address the concerns regarding solar panel investment faced by EV drivers around the world, including whether solar is more economical than grid EV charging, how to minimize the cost of solar charging, and what the potential return on investment is for a home solar EV-charging installation.
Solar panels, are they worth it?
Introducing a solar-powered EV charging station to the home can majorly offset your reliance on grid electricity, lowering your utility bills and carbon footprint at the same time. Of course, the amount of money you can save with solar panels really depends on your particular set of circumstances, including what kind of EV you drive. To know whether solar EV charging could save you money on your utility bills first requires making a few important calculations.
Calculating charging costs
The first step to knowing how much a solar panel EV charging setup can save you is to work out how much it currently costs you to recharge your EV using electricity from the grid.
The best way to do so is to determine your average daily mileage and compare this to your EV’s mileage-per-kWh (kilowatt hour) energy consumption. For the purposes of these calculations, we’ll take the daily average mileage driven by Americans – which is about 37 miles, or 59.5km – and the average energy consumption of the popular Tesla Model 3: 0.147kWh/km.
Using the Tesla Model 3 as our example, the average daily American commute of 59.5km would consume about 8.75kWh of electricity from the EV’s battery. Thus, you’d need to pay for 8.75kWh of electricity from the grid to completely recharge the Tesla at the end of the day.
Our next step is to determine the price of grid electricity in your area. It’s worth mentioning at this juncture that the price of electricity varies wildly from country to country, region to region, provider to provider and, often, depending on the time of day (more on this later). The best way to work out the price you pay your utility provider per kWh of grid electricity is to grab your latest bill.
Solar charging cost analysis
Once you’ve calculated the average annual cost of recharging your EV at home, you can begin to determine the kind of cost savings a home solar EV charging system could generate. At first glance, it would seem simple enough to say that, because the electricity generated by solar panels is free, your cost savings would be equal to the amount calculated above: $478.15, for example.
The cost of your home charging station
Whether or not you optimize your solar system with smart charging
Once you’ve determined the overall cost of your solar EV charging system, you can then compare this to the money saved by using free solar electricity to recharge your EV, rather than electricity from the grid. Usefully, consumer survey site Solar Reviews has already produced a report on the cost of solar electricity per kWh once levelized against the price of the setup. They calculate the cost of solar electricity to be less than $0.11 per kWh.
Post time: Jul-22-2024