Electric Vehicles? Towing? Hauling?
There seems to be quite a push lately for zero emission vehicles and electric only vehicles. How on Earth would these ever work for us? You can't go cross country in an electric vehicle in a pra...
Forum Discussion
tomman58 wrote:
We are seeing solar added to many new homes where as Edison buys it during the day and IF you had an EV it is at a reduced rate at night, separate meter. When we had our Volt the Wondeful government paid for a union contractor to install the breaker and the feed to my garage at the other end of the house the boys ran a number 8 wire and provided the charging unit. Life is good. In our area Edison has been upgrading the grid for many years now and the amount of solar farms and windmill are expanding exponentially. By the way traveling the USA every year we see many more wind mills and solar farms everywhere. Texas leads in windmills, no cancer reported. LOL
The vast majority of people putting solar in at home:
- The EV is not at the house during the day, so if you charge at home at night, you aren't charging on solar (unless you put in a massive battery bank to store it until the car comes home).
- Net Metering is providing power when the power company doesn't need it. Solar stops putting out power typically around 3-4pm. Peak demand is usually around 6pm. The vast majority of the cost of a KWH is in building & maintaining the power plant and grid. Fuel to for the power plant is usually around 1/3 or less of the cost. So solar has to beat traditional by a factor of 3 to be more cost effective.
Most new solar is subsidized thru govt programs, not because it makes a lot of sense. EVs could change this but right now, there are much better solutions than solar to our power needs (improved efficiency is typically 3-5 times more cost effective and requires no infrastructure improvements typically)
