Quote from: Nearings Fault on Jul 07, 2023, 01:44 PMNot bad for a guess but your numbers are way off. The level 1 charger on a Tesla is roughly 1200 watts or 4 to 5 miles per hour. You would not use a level one charger on solar with a large array you would use a level 2 at 30 amps at 240 volts for roughly 25 to 30 miles of charge per hour. If I was designing it I would do a 3kw array feeding to the grid for an electric car driving roughly 10000 miles a year. If the were off grid I would want to boost the array size to 5000 watts just for the car portion. I end up charging about 3 dollars Canadian per watt so roughly 15000 for the array required to run the car
Just had the numbers provided by Google, I figured you would come back with a more accurate figure. :P 30A 240V is 7200W, how much do those inverters go for? How much for the wiring from the array to the garage? How much for the installation on roof and off roof on scaffolding? How many sq feet does it take up? How much for the grid tie in and licensing? How much to set it on motors to track the sun?
In any event, it is cheaper than my Google estimate, and for 25-30 mi/hr of charging, time is 2 5 hour days of charging for a 250-300 mi range. Still need the sunny days, still can't use the car during the time of day you need to be charging it.
As I see it, EVs make great commuter cars as long as the workplace parking has plug-ins. However, this then puts the charging load on the grid unless said workplace has an array big enough to charge all the employee Teslas simultaneously. I wonder if even Tesla HQ has an array that big?
RE
Edit: You're proposing 3kw of power, not 7200w. So the charging time is more than twice as long, about the 5 days I originally calculated.]