As one of the sunniest places on earth, South Africa is a prime location for solar power generation and based on the marked increase in home-based solar power systems locally, it would appear that our citizens are looking at clean energy to try and avoid the ongoing load shedding crisis. Could you use your solar power system to charge an electric car (EV), though?
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To cut a long story short!
In short, yes, charging an EV is entirely possible using solar power, but as we will go on to explain in the video below and will elaborate on, there are nuances to keeping your EV going on solar power alone.
The power of solar
The details
Solar power is created by so-called photovoltaic panels which convert sunlight into electricity. The amount of power a panel can produce is entirely dependent on the number of hours of direct sunlight the panel is exposed to per day versus the claimed wattage of the panel. Let's say that you get 6 hours of direct sunlight into a 450-watt panel, you could, in ideal conditions produce 2.7 kWh per panel per day. You then take the 2.7kWh output and multiply it by the total number of panels, which for argument's sake, let's say is ten, and you have a total of 27kWh produced per day. If we look at the average size of a new EV battery as roughly 60kWh, accounting for the low-end being 30kWH and the high-end being over 100kWh, our solar power system, in order to provide a reasonable amount of power back into your car while still providing some power for your home, would have to be very large.
