Solar

[Jolee]

Curious-How many of you have solar? So far, four months of ownership + 1000 milage, this car has been perfect for an old lady who drives low milage and simply plugs it in in the garage overnight once a week. MANY aspects I do not understand but am taking it one day at a time. I appreciate this forum. My solar provides the electricity and I have had no increase in electric bill. My only regret is that I am not younger and not very bright but that is not the fault of the Kona. Wish one of you or someone with a Kona Ev lived nearby.
Thanks Guys,
Any women owners??

 

[Joev]

My wife and I live on Long Island in NY state if we can help you out. When we got our Kona EV we gave our mom (85 yrs. young) our plug-in-Prius and she loves it! Most of her driving in battery mode, tried to convince her to go all electric but she says she's not ready for that.....yet.
BTW we have solar and have been enjoying it for almost 20 years!

 

[Fastnf]

I have a large 6 kw solar array. I put it in 5 years ago with the plans to eventually get an electric vehicle. I haven't paid for electricity since. 99 % of my driving is local and therefor solar powered. I don't generally mention my gender on the forum so we will just leave it that way. I am a retired engineer so am very comfortable with the tech side of the posts. I have done one 2200 mile road trip to visit relatives and that is the only time I have used public charging and had no difficulties or delays on the trip.

I don't know where you are but I am in Tehachapi California.

 

[Jolee]

My wife and I live on Long Island in NY state if we can help you out. When we got our Kona EV we gave our mom (85 yrs. young) our plug-in-Prius and she loves it! Most of her driving in battery mode, tried to convince her to go all electric but she says she's not ready for that.....yet.
BTW we have solar and have been enjoying it for almost 20 years!

How nice to hear about your mom! I happen to be 81. God bless us Thank you for your kind offer.

 

[ericy]

Curious-How many of you have solar?

We have a 10kW array on the roof (coastal DE), but I do not yet have a Kona. That being said, I do have some thoughts.

For us, both our heat and AC are electric. We do have propane, but the only thing that that is used for is the fireplace in the living room. Regular heat is a heat pump plus supplemental in the winter, and normal AC in the summer. Just looking at our bills, winter is when they are huge because we use a lot of electricity for the heat, and the solar array doesn't supply as much due to the short days. In April, we started generating more than we used - ever since then we have had the minimum bill (~30$ - that's what we would pay if we used 0kWh). We still have a bit of a surplus in the bank - it wouldn't surprise me if the next bill at the end of the month would be the same, but then we start having to pay again.

Let's hypothetically say that I would need roughly a full charge on a Kona once a week, which would be about 250kWh/month. Last Jan we used ~2600kWh, so adding a Kona would be another 10% or so on top of that. As I look at my numbers, I would roughly guess that we would no longer build up much of a surplus in the spring.

 

[R P]

We have solar at our cabin (off grid) and it works great. Would love to have it at home, but at this time there are no govt subsidies or incentives to install it. Fall fed election coming up in Canada, and one of the candidates. as part of his green program, will be offering subsidies for home renovations that conserve energy, incl solar. So maybe... will have to wait and see.

Despite an abundance of clean hydro power in BC, electricity is not cheap here. No off peak discounts, and with our tiered price structure based on usage, EV charging at home can push your electricity costs into the next highest cost tier. Luckily, there are a lot of free chargers here (for now), so no need to charge at home. So far have never had to charge at home. Will see how long that streak carries on. My nearby free charger (walking distance from home) is getting more busy these days, and not looking forward to walking in the cold rain this winter.

So yeah, would really like to have solar at home.

 

[electriceddy]

We have solar at our cabin (off grid) and it works great. Would love to have it at home, but at this time there are no govt subsidies or incentives to install it. Fall fed election coming up in Canada, and one of the candidates. as part of his green program, will be offering subsidies for home renovations that conserve energy, incl solar. So maybe... will have to wait and see.

Despite an abundance of clean hydro power in BC, electricity is not cheap here. No off peak discounts, and with our tiered price structure based on usage, EV charging at home can push your electricity costs into the next highest cost tier. Luckily, there are a lot of free chargers here (for now), so no need to charge at home. So far have never had to charge at home. Will see how long that streak carries on. My nearby free charger (walking distance from home) is getting more busy these days, and not looking forward to walking in the cold rain this winter.

So yeah, would really like to have solar at home.

No offense intended, but personally don't think I would bother "walking in the cold rain" to save $20 / month, particularity considering this post and knowing you have a superior L2 setup:
https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/rv-adapter.6247/page-3#post-76770

and leave the local (within walking distance from home) public 3 kW EVSE for low capacity vehicles and PHEV's (and apartment/condo dwellers) who have no choice

 

[R P]

No offense intended, but personally don't think I would bother "walking in the cold rain" to save $20 / month, particularity considering this post and knowing you have a superior L2 setup:
https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/rv-adapter.6247/page-3#post-76770
and leave the local (within walking distance from home) public 3 kW EVSE for low capacity vehicles and PHEV's (and apartment/condo dwellers) who have no choice

I don't know what exactly you mean. I live in a nice community and am thankful as I'm sure other EV owners in the neighbourhood are that we have a free charger nearby. I don't think of other people about whether they live in a condo or not. I don't consider myself any better or different than anyone else. We all have to pay taxes, some of us more than others, but have the same right to the services provided by our govts.

As for condos in my area, there are no large apartment complexes. All the ones I know of are townhouse types with their own garages. And all are large ones at that with double garages. So I'm quite sure the EV owners in them probably can have their own L2 chargers if they want. And I have seen our municipality advertise about being EV friendly, not only with free chargers, but help and incentives to strata owners to install their own EV stations.

I actually like the walks to my charger as it is good exercise (wife and I share that privilege). But like I said, may not like it as much in the cold rain. So yeah, might start charging more at home. Will see...

As for electricity costs, my wife just told me our last bill was almost $600 (for 2 months). I am sure our central air has a lot to do with that during the summer months. Not sure how much home charging would add to that, but obviously I am well over the avg household tier price threshold of BC Hydro. Between them, Telus and Shaw cable, am not very happy with my home utility bills. So any money I can save with that makes me happy.

And back to the subject of this thread, yeah, really would like to have home solar, not just to save the planet, but dramatically reduce my electricity bills.

 

[Devhead]

Curious-How many of you have solar? So far, four months of ownership + 1000 milage, this car has been perfect for an old lady who drives low milage and simply plugs it in in the garage overnight once a week. MANY aspects I do not understand but am taking it one day at a time. I appreciate this forum. My solar provides the electricity and I have had no increase in electric bill. My only regret is that I am not younger and not very bright but that is not the fault of the Kona. Wish one of you or someone with a Kona Ev lived nearby.
Thanks Guys,
Any women owners??

I've had my Kona for almost 6 months. I've had a small (1.8kw) solar system for 5 years. I recently installed another 1kw solar system. If I did the math correctly, the new panels will provide about 6,000 miles of driving each year which is more than enough for the local driving I do. I've yet to pay to charge my car at a public charger.

 

[FlbrkMike]

I live in northern San Diego County and have a PV system that's approximately 5 kW. We sized it at the time (in 2012) to offset about 85% of our annual usage, which included a pool pump and all electric kitchen. Heating, hot water and dryer were all propane, plus a propane pool heater, which we disconnected after about a week of heating our spa. Propane is ridiculously expensive and we have been paying probably $1,000 every winter on two or three tank fills. We have since replaced the dryer once with a standard electric model and, last year, with an ultra efficient heat pump dryer.

We also have an 8 kWh Sonnen storage battery, which was installed late last year as part of an Energy Commission sponsored "smart home" study. To participate in the study we had to switch from the old tiered rates with SDG&E to one of the new TOU rates, and it has saved us several $$hundred in the past few months. I had a Fusion Energi until May, and turned that in when the lease ran out for my new Kona EV Limited. We are now paying $0.09/kWh during the super off-peak period from midnight until 6:00 am (until 2:00 pm on weekends and holidays) vs $0.52/kWh on-peak (4:00 pm until 9:00 pm June through October) and $0.24 otherwise. I have my L2 charger set to charge only during the super off-peak, and the battery does as much as it can to make sure we don't use any $0.52 electrons, though it couldn't quite keep up with the AC during August and September. Even so, I'm charging at $0.09 and putting solar PV back into the grid at $0.24 or $0.52.

As a comparison, during the most recent September billing cycle (ended 9/22) we had a net usage of 762 kWh and our bill was $150.00 including a $16.00 meter charge, average of $0.20/kWh. Same period last year 973 kWh and paid $380.00, average of $0.39/kWh. During the June billing cycle we used a net 123 kWh and actually had a billing credit of $36.00 due to the "arbitrage" that the battery makes possible. June of last year was 255 kWh and $66.21 ($0.26/kWh).

We are now in the process of adding an additional 2.6 kW to our PV system. I plan to replace the propane water heater with a hybrid heat pump water heater, which is probably 4 times more efficient, and replace the propane furnace with an air source heat pump so that we can ditch the propane completely.