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Owners of home photovoltaic systems will soon be able to make their households even more sustainable, because PV power is also suitable for charging personal electronic vehicles. A home energy management system created by Fraunhofer researchers incorporates electric vehicles into the household energy network and creates charging itineraries.
The house of the future is environmentally friendly, energy efficient and smart. Its inhabitants can utilize rooftop-generated PV energy not only for household consumption but also to charge their personal electric vehicle. This scenario has already become reality for a collection of row houses built according to the "Passive House" standard in the German city of Fellbach in Baden-Württemberg. The group of new homes was upgraded as part of the "Fellbach ZeroPlus" project to include electromobility enhancements as well as a comprehensive energy management system. The initiative is sponsored by the German Federal Government's "Electric Mobility Showcase" program.
A couple Soylentils have done something like this, so perhaps this would be of interest to others who are considering doing likewise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:02PM
UK. Several hundred metres of roofing (don't know exact area but it's a LARGE base of mostly single-storey buildings). Currently at 0.8KW. Most I've seen it is a handful of KW. Would like to see anyone run a server of any import on 800W of upy-downy-flaky solar.
Welcome to real life, where if you're not on the equator or in Arizona you get almost nothing. Your solar output dropping going from Arizona (34 degrees) to Seattle (47 degrees) halves your output. Almost all the EU is at higher latitudes, most of Asia, the northern states, Canada, etc. Agreed that the Southern hemisphere isn't quite so bad for such things, but there's more to the planet than the US - and you can't just fling a cable down and transport it without massive losses either.
This is very much a case of "it works here, it should work everywhere", plus that you have to have "the latest system" (or else you're considered "inefficient" - but you'll be "inefficient" next week too when your stuff is junk and unsaleable and you're told to just buy a new system again - hence my recycling concerns).
I honestly couldn't run a washing machine from anything I've been quoted for for my own house, without battery storage and being ultra-careful about usage.
School bursars, by the way, know this. It's a point of contention with them. They run the numbers and they just DO NOT add up for them. They may get forced to do so "for image" but in general they know exactly what's happening. I've watched any number of solar salesman fail miserably in front of a bursar with even a modicum of electrical knowledge. Schools are particularly easy targets especially when other solar is fairly useless (there are no domestic solar installations near me, but a few towns I drive through have a handful of "hot-water" solar systems only - I laugh because I've seen the prices on those exact models too).