I’m not sure if I’m posting in the right sub-forum, if I’m not, I apologize.
My parents are thinking about possibly buying a new Nissan Leaf, since they are now both retired. Economically, it made sense to them to transition to an EV, although they’ll still keep their Pilot for out-of-town trips and such.
My dad’s biggest concern was whether having a charging station installed in their garage would overtax their solar panel system? Last winter they had about 12-14 panels installed on their roof by Solar City for a roughly 90% offset of their energy bill. The system is designed to handle all of their kitchen and laundry appliances as well as their pool pump. I don’t see why a charging station would negatively impact the system since it’s not like all of those appliances are running simultaneously anyway.
What do you guys think? Is it possible something like that could damage the setup or should it be ok?
I’m a solar engineer so I can help you with this. It will not damage the system. It doesn’t matter if all the appliances are on at the same time. They can use as much power as they want, and add loads to the system just like everyone else. But that power has to come from somewhere. So the only thing that matters is the amount of power they use per day (or per month). Since they will be adding more power use to the system, the effect will be that they will have to purchase more power from the power company. So if they are getting 90% from solar now and 10% from the power company, they will have to get more from the power company because their power use is going up and their solar production is remaining the same.
It would be fairly easy to estimate the extra power they will have to purchase and the cost. Look up the average KWH per mile for the car, multiply it by the number of miles per day they will be driving. That will tell you how many KWH they will be adding to the system (and that they will have to purchase). the cost would be the number of KWH per day times the cost per KWH (national average is about 13 cents)
Hope that helps.
[quote=bagel;21659]Hey all,
I’m not sure if I’m posting in the right sub-forum, if I’m not, I apologize.
My parents are thinking about possibly buying a new Nissan Leaf, since they are now both retired. Economically, it made sense to them to transition to an EV, although they’ll still keep their Pilot for out-of-town trips and such.
My dad’s biggest concern was whether having a charging station installed in their garage would overtax their solar panel system? Last winter they had about 12-14 panels installed on their roof by Solar City for a roughly 90% offset of their energy bill. The system is designed to handle all of their kitchen and laundry appliances as well as their pool pump. I don’t see why a charging station would negatively impact the system since it’s not like all of those appliances are running simultaneously anyway.
What do you guys think? Is it possible something like that could damage the setup or should it be ok?