EV charging & solar: A single 350w charger would require 1094 solar panels!

[COdogman]

Count me among those who hope that in my lifetime we can have networks of EV chargers powered exclusively by standalone solar arrays that cleanly and quietly top off our batteries while providing shade for our vehicles. I think most of know we aren’t there yet, but this article does a good job explaining exactly how far away we are. The author smartly points out that we need more people to understand exactly how much energy is required to supply the charging network of the near future and to not fall for “green energy theater”. This is also important because if all we do is add a bunch of chargers while getting most of our electricity from carbon based sources, we will not be accomplishing what many of us trying to do. We will be going the opposite direction, accelerating the very problem we are trying to solve.

The numbers:
A bank of four 150KW EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 100 homes.
A bank of four 350KW EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 230 homes.
A single 150KW EV charger would require 469 solar panels.
A single 350KW EV charger would require 1094 solar panels or roughly 20,000sf of space.
A typical 5MW solar array requires 30-40 acres of space, which is approximately what an EV station with a dozen or so chargers would require.

The article does link to the studies it refers to, completed by the charging networks themselves, like EVGo and Electrify America.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7w...nopy-is-powering-ev-fast-chargers-think-again

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[zefram47]

To be blunt, the expectation with solar charging stations is that they'd assume they won't be under constant use. They'd have batteries which would charge from the solar and help mitigate grid demand, or eliminate it for some off-grid locations. Yes, it would limit the number of vehicles served, but let's be realistic about what these kinds of stations can actually do. And as Level 2, they'd be even better in the long run at trail heads and the like. Lookup the Freewire DCFC offerings to see a non-solar example of how it can work.

 

[COdogman]

To be blunt, the expectation with solar charging stations is that they'd assume they won't be under constant use. They'd have batteries which would charge from the solar and help mitigate grid demand, or eliminate it for some off-grid locations. Yes, it would limit the number of vehicles served, but let's be realistic about what these kinds of stations can actually do. And as Level 2, they'd be even better in the long run at trail heads and the like. Lookup the Freewire DCFC offerings to see a non-solar example of how it can work.

Agree 100%. I think that is the point of the article - being realistic about it. They obviously didn’t get into the possibilities with batteries, etc.

I’ll check out Freewire. Thanks

 

[Zoidz]

Thanks for p

Count me among those who hope that in my lifetime we can have networks of EV chargers powered exclusively by standalone solar arrays that cleanly and quietly top off our batteries while providing shade for our vehicles. I think most of know we aren’t there yet, but this article does a good job explaining exactly how far away we are. The author smartly points out that we need more people to understand exactly how much energy is required to supply the charging network of the near future and to not fall for “green energy theater”. This is also important because if all we do is add a bunch of chargers while getting most of our electricity from carbon based sources, we will not be accomplishing what many of us trying to do. We will be going the opposite direction, accelerating the very problem we are trying to solve.

The numbers:
A bank of four 150w EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 100 homes.
A bank of four 350w EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 230 homes.
A single 150w EV charger would require 469 solar panels.
A single 350w EV charger would require 1094 solar panels or roughly 20,000sf of space.
A typical 5mw solar array requires 30-40 acres of space, which is approximately what an EV station with a dozen or so chargers would require.

The article does link to the studies it refers to, completed by the charging networks themselves, like EVGo and Electrify America.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7w...nopy-is-powering-ev-fast-chargers-think-again

Thanks for posting, great article that explains it clearly in layman's terms. The lack of understanding solar capacilty/capability is widespread, and I get it that electric power, energy sources, conversion and storage etc. is not intuitive to many/most people. How often have we seen here the suggestion here that a handful of solar panels on the bed of an R1T is a great idea usefully extend the daily range? Similar with storage, the idea of storing massive amounts of solar power via battery or hydro sounds easy, but is full of major challenges.

 

[DeafPug]

Conflating a single Watt (abbreviated as W) with a KiloWatt (or 1,000 Watts abbreviated as kW) is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Screeeeech!

Also, a MegaWatt (1,000,000 Watts) is abbreviated as MW, not mw and definitely not mW. In prefixes used to modify standard SI Units, a capital M is Mega, which is one million, where a lowercase m is “milli” or 1/1000 of at ….

1 MW = 1,000 kW = 1,000,000 W = 1,000,000,000 mW

 

[COdogman]

Conflating a single Watt (abbreviated as W) with a KiloWatt (or 1,000 Watts abbreviated as kW) is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Screeeeech!

Also, a MegaWatt (1,000,000 Watts) is abbreviated as MW, not mw and definitely not mW. In prefixes used to modify standard SI Units, a capital M is Mega, which is one million, where a lowercase m is “milli” or 1/1000 of at ….

1 MW = 1,000 kW = 1,000,000 W = 1,000,000,000 mW

Fixed. Thank you for the correction?

 

[sub]

Count me among those who hope that in my lifetime we can have networks of EV chargers powered exclusively by standalone solar arrays that cleanly and quietly top off our batteries while providing shade for our vehicles. I think most of know we aren’t there yet, but this article does a good job explaining exactly how far away we are. The author smartly points out that we need more people to understand exactly how much energy is required to supply the charging network of the near future and to not fall for “green energy theater”. This is also important because if all we do is add a bunch of chargers while getting most of our electricity from carbon based sources, we will not be accomplishing what many of us trying to do. We will be going the opposite direction, accelerating the very problem we are trying to solve.

The numbers:
A bank of four 150W EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 100 homes.
A bank of four 350W EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 230 homes.
A single 150W EV charger would require 469 solar panels.
A single 350W EV charger would require 1094 solar panels or roughly 20,000sf of space.
A typical 5MW solar array requires 30-40 acres of space, which is approximately what an EV station with a dozen or so chargers would require.

The article does link to the studies it refers to, completed by the charging networks themselves, like EVGo and Electrify America.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7w...nopy-is-powering-ev-fast-chargers-think-again

Fixed. Thank you for the correction?

nope - still not fixed. A 150W ev charger would take a few months to charge a car. A bank of 4 150W chargers would (barely) power 100 cell phones, which comes up slightly short of 100 homes unless you think most homes contain nothing but a cell phone charger.

 

[Dark-Fx]

You're missing some "k"s

 

[JayinNJ]

Count me among those who hope that in my lifetime we can have networks of EV chargers powered exclusively by standalone solar arrays that cleanly and quietly top off our batteries while providing shade for our vehicles. I think most of know we aren’t there yet, but this article does a good job explaining exactly how far away we are. The author smartly points out that we need more people to understand exactly how much energy is required to supply the charging network of the near future and to not fall for “green energy theater”. This is also important because if all we do is add a bunch of chargers while getting most of our electricity from carbon based sources, we will not be accomplishing what many of us trying to do. We will be going the opposite direction, accelerating the very problem we are trying to solve.

The numbers:
A bank of four 150W EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 100 homes.
A bank of four 350W EV chargers requires enough electricity to power 230 homes.
A single 150W EV charger would require 469 solar panels.
A single 350W EV charger would require 1094 solar panels or roughly 20,000sf of space.
A typical 5MW solar array requires 30-40 acres of space, which is approximately what an EV station with a dozen or so chargers would require.

The article does link to the studies it refers to, completed by the charging networks themselves, like EVGo and Electrify America.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7w...nopy-is-powering-ev-fast-chargers-think-again

Current panels are 20-25% efficient. So even if they were 100% efficient, which will never happen, you are still talking about 1/5 or 1/4 the number of these panels. So no charger location is going to be self sufficient, if it needs to support multiple chargers, has a reasonable amount of space and is fairly busy.

 

[Dark-Fx]

So no charger location is going to be self sufficient, if it needs to support multiple chargers, has a reasonable amount of space and is fairly busy.

A 350kW diesel generator is large enough to take up an entire parking spot with no extra room. A 2000kW generator fills an entire shipping container. Even using traditional power generation methods it's not really feasible to do on-site generation in a crowded and busy area.

 

[Craigins]

Also I believe the average US house equivalent is closer to 70 houses per MW.
Used to be 100 around a decade ago.

 

[ads75]

Also I believe the average US house equivalent is closer to 70 houses per MW.
Used to be 100 around a decade ago.

I think your numbers are off by a factor of 10, closer to 700-1000 houses per 1 MW, depending on size and season.

 

[Craigins]

I think your numbers are off by a factor of 10, closer to 700-1000 houses per 1 MW, depending on size and season.

1000000 / 700 = 1450 (rounding up).

Central air can be up to 3kW. My pc has a 1kW power supply. House resistance heating is also a hige consumption.

The 70 / MW would be a peak value. So think summer time when everyone gets home from work, turns on the TV and the AC and everything else.

Anyways, with the math it is closer to 80 houses not 70.

Also this isn't average consumption, the conversation was on generation capacity. The system needs to be designed for the peak demand. You don't build generator capacity on average demand levels.

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