SeattleEVA Forums
May 21, 2012, 07:47:07 am *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Welcome to the Seattle EVA Forums! Not to be confused with the Wiki or the Maillist which both remains active.
 
    SEVA wiki     RSS All   SEVA Forums Home   Help Search Calendar Login Register  
Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Solar power to electric power  (Read 1477 times)
0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
Eletruk
Sr. Member
****

Karma: +4/-1
Offline Offline

Posts: 89



« Reply #1019: April 20, 2009, 01:37:14 pm »

I have both, PV panels, and EVs. But my daily vehicle (Ford Ranger EV) uses 220V and my PV system is 110V so I can't directly charge the truck from the panels. However, the PV system can be grid tied, and the excess sold to the grid, and the the truck charges off the grid, essentially using the grid as a 110-220 converter (of sorts). However, I have directly charged my electric bike, and my 1991 Ford Festiva conversion from the PV system. I haven't really gotten as far as tracking actual power consumption or anything like that. It's on my list of future projects, to data log everything, but so far, I just pay the electric bill.
So far the truck averages about 350Wh/mile. And the PV system has 4 120W solar panels. So if we include system losses, I could expect about 1 mile charge per hour of sunlight, which is more than my daily commute of 4 miles. So theoretcally I am still energy positive on sunny days. What I don't know is what kind of power I get on overcast and rainy days. Of course on nice days (like today) I also can opt to walk or ride my bike, so I wouldn't even use the EV. So in the overall scheme of things, I think my 4 panel array provides electricity in excess of my daily useage, which would pretty much make my transportation carbon negative (I also signed up for 100% renewable electricity) but not my overall electricity usage. I would need a much bigger array for that (also on my list).
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.6 | SMF © 2006-2008, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Page created in 0.067 seconds with 20 queries.