Can you charge your car from your solar panels?

The short answer is yes, absolutely. You can charge any plug-in Electric Vehicle on solar power, and effectively fuel your car from the sun. Can you charge it all year round, probably not (unless you have a larger than average solar array) but for at least half the year you could potentially get a significant amount of range purely from solar energy, and in the summer it could give you hundreds of miles of sun-powered driving per month.

One of the few positives to come from 2020 is that many more people will be working from home, so not only will they be travelling fewer miles, but can leave their EVs plugged in during the day when most of their excess power is produced. This means that instead of sending your extra energy back into the grid it can go into your fuel tank instead, because generally your car is going to be stationary for most of the day.

One of our Zappi charger in action. The green light means it’s charging on 100% clean energy!

To get the most out of your solar panels we recommend fitting the amazing MyEnergi Zappi charger because it can detect when you’re making more power than you need and automatically divert it to charge your car. And you can even choose exactly how much of your extra power is used, meaning you can run your car on a mix of grid power and solar for extra speed, or 100% sunshine for the ultimate green driving experience.

Sounds too good be true right? Well here’s a photo of one of our customers doing just that (the green light on the charger means the car is charging on 100% green energy), so we know the technology works because it’s in use by our customers every day. So in theory you can fuel your car from your very own 100% green nuclear reactor in the sky!