I would like to install a wall box to charge my Peugeot e2008 from solar panels. Zappis are about £1000 ish to purchase and install (- grant) Peugeot are offering a non solar Podpoint for £149 with the rest being covered by Peugeot/grant. Considering the output from my 3.6kw inverter and my energy supply is sourced from 100%renewable energy, I am thinking a Zappi is not worth it from an outlay and efficiency point of view. Has anyone else considered this?
Efficiency of cost of installing home wall charger to charge EV from solar panels
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Many, many have chewed this over.
It all depends on the maths for your particular circumstances:- Combination of amount of solar generated, how it is currently used, how many miles a year you drive, whether the car will be available (and/or convenient) for daytime charging, etc.
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You're correct. Some circumstances will cause a Zappi to make financial sense, but in most scenarios you won't. In particular, if you are getting Smart Export Guarantee and using something like Octopus Go or Agile then you'll get paid the same or more for exporting that electricity than it will cost you to charge the car from the grid overnight.
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Honestly, unless you're paying 15p/kwh+ for your consumption then Zappi will never make sense financially.
So if you have a pre-pay meter on a bad all day rate AND your panels are large enough to produce enough power to charge your car AND your car is at home during the day AND you don't want to use that power for a washing machine/tumble drier/home office etc, THEN it makes sense. Elsewise, it's a nice toy and something to help the smugness, but an expensive way to avoid "oh it's sunny, I will go plug the car in" which seems to work for me
I am paid a pittance for my export, and only do this after my house battery is full, and honestly it's not really worth it either, since the overnight agile rates are so low that charging the car is inexpensive anyway.
So many, including myself, have come to the same conclusion that it is not worth the extra, that I honestly think that they (Zappi) deprive themselves of loads of extra sales because they have the pricing wrong. If a Zappi was the same price as others then I may have thought why not, but given that I figured it wouldn't save me a penny because of the reasons already stated above (get paid SEG payments for excess instead and charge overnight), I chose to go elsewhere.
Charging from solar - worth it?
Solar is best to offset daytime use. You can always charge a car on nearly free leccy at night. EV ownership doesn't really make a difference towards making solar panels worth it or not
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I had a 1 year old chargemaster but when I had solar put in I decided to get the Solaredge EV charging inverter and replaced it. A little bit more cost effective than adding a Zappi without grant. It won't pay back I know that but it is satisfying to be able to charge from your panels .
I'm considering solor but couldn't see how it would pay off. It's so cheap overnight charging from the grid and much less hassle.
If it do get solar the biggest benefit for me would be the ability to heat up the hot water and not rely on grid gas, except for winter heating
If it do get solar the biggest benefit for me would be the ability to heat up the hot water and not rely on grid gas, except for winter heating
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It will pay for itself over a long enough period, but it can be quite long.
as the share of renewables on the grid increases those of us with solar and batteries will continue to pay low net prices from the grid (as we’ll be importing wind at nighttime) while those unable to flex their demand will pay higher and higher prices to cover their increasingly expensive peak period demand.
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