NEWS: Smart EV charger uses surplus solar power to charge your car for free

Phil Hinton

For those people with both an electric car and solar panels, a new EV charger can charge the car for free using surplus solar power.
Read the news.

big boss

That's very nice! Is there a setting to select if you want the car fully charged by certain time, so that it can use a combination of solar power and electricity optimally?

I'm assuming you can apply for 75% Government grant over £495, which would bring the cost down to £125, right?

Chester

That's interesting, and an interesting way to dynamically charge your car throughout the day.  I hope they introduce a 'post' type design with more security in mind as that looks very 'accessible'.

I'm not sure about any buy-back argument for installations fitted prior to April 2015 though.  If you're already justifying buy-back for a solar PV installation of several thousand pounds over a couple of decades from the energy produced and your FIT scheme tariff, then this only serves to redistribute that offset.  Solar PV plus storage (you know the product I'm thinking of, it ends with 'wall'!) maybe a better way of capturing unused surplus for re-use in almost any application.

However, for newer installations, assuming an average 6 hour per day surplus at 1.3KW/h could be maintained throughout the year, a £500 install charge could be paid back within a year.  Considering something is required to charge an EV anyway, that's pretty good.  Keeping in mind the EV needs to be at home during daylight hours.  Great for those who work at home or the graveyard shift.

Today FIT is around 1/4th of unit purchase cost for new installations so using systems like this makes the best use of local energy production.  Good stuff.  We need more people with brains like Lee, and hopefully with more people taking up this technology moving forward, the demand for the likes of Hinkley Point C will be voided completely.

Wishful thinking?  I sincerely hope not.

Stuart Wright

Yes.  From the manual.
Smart Boost
The Smart Boost function will charge the EV with a minimum kWh figure by a set time.
                                                                               

The OLEV grant of 75% applies to the unit and the installation up to a maxium of, I think, £500.

Stuart Wright

Well it's already a redundant idea because it's subsidised to the value of over £100 per mWh.
How much would Hinkley C cost bill payers?
Whereas wind farms are currently costing half that.
Offshore wind to power £17.5bn investment boom as costs halve
So the solution is to build more wind farms.

Chester

Yeah, Kryten's (sorry, couldn't resist Robert!) recent report on wind turbines providing up to 20 times more power than a decade ago is quite astonishing.  And it's really fabulous progress, but there doesn't seem any stopping HP-C going ahead at the moment, except that it's 'under review'.  Mmm.

Anyway, do let us know how Zappi is working out for you in a month's time...

big boss

Looking on their website, they have another interesting product: Eddi. I've asked for quotes of both.

Stuart Wright

Ours was the first installation of both for a customer.  We're kind of beta testing the installation because the units are not talking to each other at the moment.  Eddi is taking all the spare power, since it jumps in and takes the power before the car, which takes a few seconds to initialise charging.
So we're having another visit for a firmware update.
The plan is to have priority given to the car since electricity, even at the Economy rate, is more expensive than gas (which is how our hot water tank is heated normally).
So when the surplus power is under 1.3kW, Eddi will take it (because the charging standard has a minimum of 1.3kW).
When surplus power rises above 1.3kW the car will start charging and Eddi will stop using it.
When the car is fully charged, Eddi will start using it again.
When the water is hot enough, we export to the grid.

True Romance

As above a great idea for anyone that stays at home all day, not much use if you do the 9-5 run I'd guess? The futures got to be power wall batteries. Some great promise shown on recent Fully Charged shows.

Stuart Wright

If I had a 9-5 job, I would definitely be enquiring with my employer whether they could install a charger and even solar panels.