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How to Determine How Many Solar Panels You’ll Need to Charge Your Electric Vehicle (EV)

Welcome to the Solar Energy Channel, where you will get an honest inside look at all things solar. In this video we’re gonna talk about how many solar panels does it take to charge your electric vehicle.

I’m Charles. – And I’m Warren. And before we get into the video, don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel so you’ll get notified of future videos just like this. – So Warren, those who have an electric vehicle or are thinking of purchasing one what considerations should they have when looking at solar? – Yeah, that’s a great question, Charles.

You know, the biggest consideration is how much do you drive? How far do you commute to and from work? How many miles are you gonna be putting on your electric vehicle? Cause that’ll give you an indication of how much additional solar you need and how many electric vehicles you have.

If you have to, you’ll need double the amount or so. To give you an idea, Charles, a car that drives 10,000 miles a year will need about an extra six solar panels, about 3,500 kilowatt hours or so per year.

So for every electric vehicle that’s driving 10,000 miles, you should plan on adding approximately six solar panels to your system. – So Warren, how long will it take someone to charge their electric vehicle? – That’s an excellent question and there’s some variables involved in that too, Charles.

So first of all, there’s three different types of charges. A level one, two, and three. Different types of charges and they charge at different rates. The first charger, the level one charger is typically the free charger, well, not free, it’s the charger that your dealership gives you when you buy an electric vehicle, it comes with the car.

You plug it into a regular 110 outlet and it takes the slowest amount of time to charge. It’ll take more than overnight. If you deplete your battery, you should anticipate parking your car and charging it for days.

Most practical use in a home environment would be a level two charger and that plugs into a 240 outlet. So similar to your dryer or your microwave or your higher loads in your home, you’ll wanna have an electrician or your solar company install some outlets that you can have these level two charges that will charge your car overnight.

And then level three charges typically aren’t found in a home. They’re commercial or they’re found in gas stations and they do more sophisticated management of charging and payments, et cetera. – So in summary, the number of panels that you’re gonna need to charge your electric vehicle is dependent upon the amount of miles that you’re gonna drive in the course of a year.

Also, a level two charger is probably gonna be the most practical charger for a homeowner that doesn’t wanna wait days and days to charge their vehicle. So a level two is gonna charge it probably most times overnight to a full capacity of their battery.

Source : Youtube