Solar Carport and EV Charging

Yesterday I picked up my building permit for an additional solar array at my house.  My goal is 3-fold:

- Generate the remaining 15% of my house's power needs that I'm currently buying from PG&E
- Generate sufficient power to charge the 914 through a J1772 charging station
- Park the cars under a carport to block the direct sun and scorching summer heat

I bought the electrical parts for my system from my sister company AEE Solar and the carport from Protective Weather Structures in December of last year.  I've got a SnapNRack mounting system, 16 REC Group 240PE modules, a Schneider Conext 3300 inverter (which I will pull the data from and display in conjunction with my original Xantrex inverter), and a Schneider J1772 electric vehicle charging station.

A friend at work did my solar design and ran the calcs for my rebate application, and I worked with PWS's structural engineer on the final details of the carport structure.

Now that I have my permit, I can give PWS the green light to start fabrication of the metal, I'll call 811 to get them to mark any underground electrical services and I can start digging holes.

Here is a rough SketchUp model I made of the system.  The only SketchUp model I could find of a 914 was only half completed, so that's why it looks like it's missing most of the right side of the car.

Solar Charged Driving

The car is complete!  Well, there will always be a few things to work on, but as soon as I sign a collector-car declared-value insurance policy, I'll feel free to jump into the car and hit the open road.  Well, as long as the road isn't too long.  I took a bunch of pictures of the car next to my solar array, looking for the best glamour shot to have new project cards printed up.  I just wish I didn't have the white storage container in the background.  Anybody with good Photoshop skills want to take it out for me?

I've been a fan of Christof Demont-Heinrich's SolarChargedDriving.com site since it launched, and I've been itching to post about my solar-charged electric car project for a long time now.  I've sent Christof a note now that I'm done and I hope that we can work on an article.

Enjoy.

Welcome to Home Power Magazine readers

My article, titled "KEEPING TABS ON YOUR PV SYSTEM" has just been published in Home Power magazine, issue 139.

It's a survey of the products and technologies on the market for monitoring your home solar power and overall energy management, which fits in well with my job as the Monitoring Systems Engineer at REC Solar...  You can go to the magazine's web site at http://homepower.com to view sample issues or subscribe to the digital or print editions.

If you have questions about solar power or your monitoring options, I can probably steer you in the right direction!