Something that I’ve been thinking about lately is charging electric vehicles off-grid. How do you support off-grid electric vehicles with their high power demands? Charging up your EV can take up a considerable amount of your solar array capacity. Especially when you don’t have the grid tie in to balance things out at night. In a previous post I outlined some of the available electric utility vehicles you can use, but what about your daily driver? Tesla and several all-electric vehicles are now available, some at a reasonable price considering what you get in the package.
Electric Vehicles off-grid
You could just have your EV plugin to your main solar array and have a bunch of extra batteries and more infrastructure. Or you could setup an independent system. A company in San Diego has come up with a great solution to charging your EV off-grid. Envision Solar has released the second edition of their EV Arc 2020 off-grid charging station.
This is a no construction EV charging station that you can install in a car park or your backyard. What I find cool about this system is how simple it is. You can have this up and running as soon as it is delivered and placed. It’s flood-proof to almost 3 meters. It uses solar tracking to increase energy production by a claimed 25%.
Technical specifications
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
| Solar Array | 4.3kW |
| Daily range delivered | 225 miles |
| Total Battery Storage | 24,32,40 (kWh) |
| Certified Wind Load | 120mph |
Installation
When I said its an easy install, it couldn’t get easier than this. Check out the video below. I would probably recommend finding a way to secure this at your property though. It’s easy to install, so it would be easy to lift up and drive away with it.
Thoughts
I like that this is a complete stand alone system. You don’t have to have spec out your main solar array to include support for your electric vehicles. You would also hook up your electric farm vehicles to this system so that you”re not accidentally draining your main battery bank. It has various storage options which I think makes it a great solution for a complete off-grid charging station for all your vehicles.
I hope that we start to see more solutions like this in the future, especially here in Asia where we’re still heavily reliant on gas-powered vehicles for our daily drivers. I’d love to be able to have my electric scooter and EV all hooked up to this system charging my cars and reducing my emissions. If you have any other suggestions or links to other companies making cool off-grid charging systems let me know.