Reply to post: I charge with solar

Full shift to electric vans would melt Royal Mail's London hub, MPs told

DCFusor

I charge with solar

I could have wished for a Tesla, but I own a more-practical Chevy Volt, and I charge it off my solar system, which has no trouble doing that here in SW Virginia. If I don't have enough electricity, I can use the gasoline engine and that gets right on 40 mpg, while still being pretty sporty (though not a Tesla or a Camaro, it's fine). Now, I don't have a long commute - my driving is largely just errands. But my lifetime mileage since getting this car in 2011 - is 242 mpg. It's never been charged from the grid since I bought it.

Now, this likely wouldn't work for a huge outfit that drives them flat every day - my solar array is pretty big, nearly 500 sq feet (Jellied Eel is wrong about irradiance - it's a kw/sq meter in orbit, on the surface it's half that, roughly, on a clear day). For a big outfit like mail, the sq feet of panels would be prohibitive. But for a private user - not so bad, and I can use the car as additional battery capacity for my main home/campus system - we solarites have a big issue with "famine or flood" - we often get far more energy than we can store, but then there's also February. Having added an AC inverter in the Volt to let it charge my house lets me also use it as a generator that can take itself to the gas station....or just get over minor humps in supply and demand that all off-grid setups have.

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