We often find that individuals who have made the moves to add an electric vehicle to their home fleet are the same individuals who are interested in solar as an energy alternative. They desire efficiency in their vehicles, and it often leads to a desire to be more efficient in their home usage as well. After all, what is better than an electric vehicle that is charged by the sun!
There are several ways to accomplish this. We will explore a few in this article. You can have solar for your home, connect that power to your main service panel, and then re-direct power to the specific charger from your car’s manufacturer. There are also ways to transfer power straight from the solar array, through the inverter, and to your vehicle. These are referred to as DC fast chargers and are just now becoming available for use. We’ll see that technology advance rapidly over the next few years. In the near future, you’ll be able to charge your vehicle very quickly because you save any unnecessary “rectifying” from DC to AC and back to DC.
Solar Edge is a prominent inverter/optimizer brand within the solar space, and we regularly work with customers who have this technology installed with their systems. Solar Edge has a specific inverter that has a car charger linked into it and plugs right into your electric vehicle. To learn more about this product, visit the following link for the Solar Edge HD Wave inverter here.
From what we’re following in the EV space, the current technology allows for power to go one-way into the vehicle from the source, be that fossil fuel derived or solar. Up until the launch of the new F-150, this has been limited. But in the case of a power outage in the home, it seems a bit illogical to have a giant battery sitting in your garage without the ability to transfer that power back to the home. With the influx of electric vehicles currently on the market and coming on the horizon, the piece of technology that excites us the most is this ability to direct power back to the home. We hope to see more and more of this integrated into electric vehicles in the future. Homeowners who have made investments in solar, battery, and electric vehicles can get themselves to a point of having a smart, secure, simple, and safe solution now and into the future.
If you want to learn more about options for linking your electric vehicle together with a solar array in your home, schedule a conversation with an energy advisor today.
