Home Vehicle Charging with lots of solar panels and net metering question.

[Dino]

My house load, with literally everything on is not more than about 6-7K. I definitely make more than that at peak times. My solar array will generate upwards of 14K, but not quite what the charger will attempt to pull from the truck at full bore.

But as I mentioned before, the reason I got confused is b/c I can only read the meter and it's not in real time b/c it gives snapshots, and that's why at times I was seeing numbers that didn't make sense. . .

I have a 7kw (19 panels) solar system, 10 kw battery backup, and a SolArk 12kw inverter. I had my solar installer connect a 50 amp plug to the SolArk inverter via Smartload (input or output configurable). I have that set up to become active/hot when my home battery becomes 45% charged and will turn off when/if my home battery drops to 20% charged. By having this setup my excess solar production (sunny days) is charging one of my EV's during the day (retired) via a configurable charging cable at 16 amps/4kw. When EV charging, my solar sends about 4kw to the vehicle and about 1.5kw to my home and/or home battery.
If you do not have a home battery system, a solar system will shut down during a power outage to keep from back feeding the grid and putting lineman in danger of electrocution.

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[Rip]

Exactly.

The way I think about it is to consider an illuminated solar panel as if it were a battery. If you don’t draw any current from it, it outputs no energy. When you lose the grid, the inverter simply shuts off and no electrical power is drawn from the panels. There is no power “going to ground” or anywhere else.

That's a great answer, and very clarifying. Still, it's waste. The potential is there; but you would need a battery setup to capture some of that potential.

 

[Maquis]

That's a great answer, and very clarifying. Still, it's waste. The potential is there; but you would need a battery setup to capture some of that potential.

Sure….if you want to always extract the full energy available you have 3 options: use it, send it to the grid, or store it.

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