NW Ontario Ford Lightning
Well-known member
- First Name
- Robert
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2025
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 178
- Reaction score
- 178
- Location
- NW Ontario Canada
- Vehicles
- 2024 F-150 Lightning XLT
- Occupation
- Contractor
Interesting to see so many members with Solar and a Lightning...Too!!
FWIW - Our ultra low overnight rate is 2.9Cents from 11pm - 7am. the buy-back options are not great with rates like this, so I built a 115kWh solar ESS (energy storage system) battery in the workshop in it's own room. A typical day of driving around I need 25-30 kWh to recharge the Lightning, and the house and shop average 37 kWh per 24-hours on top of that.
My Solar array is 13kW and I can easily collect 60-80 kWh on a nice sunny day in March, and charge up everything.
But it is not sunny every day, and certainly not from late October until mid January.
For those periods, I have an EG4-Chargverter on a relay controlled smart plug. The smartplug can be programed to come on at 11pm and off at X-am to charge up my ESS and make up any energy I didn't get from solar that day.
I calculate this at the end of a cloudy day - what did I collect, subtract this from 67kWh = what I need to supplement from cheap overnight grid tonight.
This spring I am adding another solar array with another 6kW of panels - to help make up for the EV load and try to rely less on overnight grid charging.
Yeah, I could set the Truck up to ONLY charge from grid, but that wouldn't be as fun and I want to run from solar as often as I can. Maybe a Manual Transfer Switch in the future to allow switching the EV charger from the Grid to Solar source energy...
FWIW - Our ultra low overnight rate is 2.9Cents from 11pm - 7am. the buy-back options are not great with rates like this, so I built a 115kWh solar ESS (energy storage system) battery in the workshop in it's own room. A typical day of driving around I need 25-30 kWh to recharge the Lightning, and the house and shop average 37 kWh per 24-hours on top of that.
My Solar array is 13kW and I can easily collect 60-80 kWh on a nice sunny day in March, and charge up everything.
But it is not sunny every day, and certainly not from late October until mid January.
For those periods, I have an EG4-Chargverter on a relay controlled smart plug. The smartplug can be programed to come on at 11pm and off at X-am to charge up my ESS and make up any energy I didn't get from solar that day.
I calculate this at the end of a cloudy day - what did I collect, subtract this from 67kWh = what I need to supplement from cheap overnight grid tonight.
This spring I am adding another solar array with another 6kW of panels - to help make up for the EV load and try to rely less on overnight grid charging.
Yeah, I could set the Truck up to ONLY charge from grid, but that wouldn't be as fun and I want to run from solar as often as I can. Maybe a Manual Transfer Switch in the future to allow switching the EV charger from the Grid to Solar source energy...
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