Charging your car with solar energy. Using nature's own green resources to get from point A to point B and saving money in the process. It sounds simple! But how does it actually work? And how can you take full advantage of Solar Charging?
The Rise of Solar Power
More and more people are making the transition to solar power, and for good reason! It's a green form of electricity that is free to generate and use. With attractive financial benefits and subsidies put into place, the transition to green energy is a no-brainer. In combination with solar panels, we see many people simultaneously making the switch to greener driving.
Solar Compensation Changes
The sustainability benefit of solar power goes without saying. But another financial benefit to solar panels is the compensation for returned solar power. Delivering excess solar power back to the grid has long been a great selling point for solar panels.
Simply put, if you generate more solar power than you use up, you can deliver electricity back to the grid for a small compensation. However, as more and more people buy into solar panels, the returned solar power increases, creating a surplus.
The compensation for delivering solar power back into the grid has already been lowered significantly by some suppliers, and might even cost you money in the future.
As a result, energy market prices decrease, sometimes even below zero. This means that it can cost money for electricity suppliers to compensate customers when there is already enough electricity available. But there are still ways to intelligently utilise solar power to charge your car so you can save every penny.
Dynamic Solar Balancing
Through smart charging functionalities, you can enable charging stations to intelligently control how much electricity flows to and from your building for full efficiency control. This can be done through:
- Load Balancing - Your charger measures the power used by household appliances and uses the remainder of available power
- Solar Balancing - Uses the maximum amount of solar energy for your car, and takes the rest from the grid
- Solar Only Mode - Only allows solar power for full cost efficiency
The Future of Power
This of course allows you to regulate your electricity usage and manage excess power, but this is only the first step. New developments we see in the vehicle charging industry include:
- Home batteries that store excess power
- Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology
- Live Energy Pricing
These tools allow you to intelligently utilise power, so that you use electricity most efficiently.
Here in the Netherlands the adoption rate of solar power has more than doubled in the last three years, making it the leading country in Europe in terms of solar panel adoption.
The Volt Time Solution
Solar Charging and Dynamic Balancing is of course all possible with your Volt Time Source charger. Supported by the Volt Time App and Plugchoice, you are fully in control of how you charge your car.
Through the app, you can switch between charging modes on the fly. Whether you wish to charge exclusively on Solar Power for maximum cost efficiency or wish to charge as fast as possible through Load Balancing, it's all possible. This way, you can charge your car efficiently, quickly and sustainably.
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