not at present .... still scratching my head on that one ... or if I need one ...... but should mention I am retired so charging is probably not as important to me as to people who have to travel to work everyday
Hi and hello Dale welcome to the forum, I have just read through this thread and in the post you wrote here above you make a very important statement that you are retired, so I assume like me at home a fair bit in the daytime when the sun might be shining, now bearing that in mind you can see from your own figures that you have posted #5, that your solar array is not producing very much electricity at this time of year, and what you are producing will be getting use by your home usages mainly, so not much excess if any to put in the car.
Now don’t despair, things will get better in the spring you say you have a 3.5kw array on you roof, well from 10 yours or so experience in having a 3.84kw array on my roof, at the very best in ideal conditions the max you may produce in any one day will be in the order of 24-27kw but that won’t happen often, so let’s assume that for 6-7 months of the year an average of 15-20kw per day and I’m being generous there, depending how much you use in the home you are not left with a great lot for the car.
So which way to go, well as we know your home a fair amount in the day so you could just plug in the granny box and control it manually with the switch or a smart switch, just be sure your home electrical systems are in good order and your smart switch is up to the load also remember the granny charger is very slow and will need many hours to charge the car also be aware if you need to use extension leads that they are of the correct rating for the job and fully Unwound.
The other way is to have a 7kw charge point installed which will charge must faster, there are many of these on the market so take your pick, some of these can be pricey so take care and do your researching first.
There is a few that work well with solar, I have the Zappi the good thing about that unit is, it as 3 settings you can use Fast, Eco,and Eco plus,now in Fast mode it will charge the car at around 7.3kw until you stop it, in Eco mode it will charge at a constant 1.4kw and also send anything left over from the solar array to the car so if nothing is being used in the house all of the solar output will go to the car but it will never go below 1.4kw. In Eco plus mode the car will not charge until your solar is producing at lease 1.4kw, so if the sun goes behind a cloud the car will stop charging if the solar goes down below 1.4 kw, the happy medium in all this is for me is the Eco mode and then if I need more I can just switch it into fast mode but the cost for this charger is around the £900 mark some may be a bit cheaper if you shop around
So Dale sorry if that lot is a bit of a read, but with your solar array very much like mine there is no way you can run the car for free all of the time, you will get some free miles but not all, but it’s still a lot cheaper than an ICE vehicle and that’s for sure.
Les
