by When Jim Selgo moved to his home in Goodyear, Arizona in 2019, he quickly installed solar rooftops, having had a positive experience with the sun at his previous home.
Less than a year later, motivated to take greater action to address climate change, he said, Selgo bought his first electric vehicle, a Nissan Leaf. He hasn’t paid for electricity or gasoline since.
As for the sun, “You take advantage of what you’re producing in your own home,” he said. “You increase your savings by adding EV and it adds value to the whole project.”
Selgo, a retired public school principal who now drives a Volkswagen ID.4 electric SUV, is one of many people using solar energy to power their EVs on clean electricity, effectively sunlight. And it goes the other way too.
“It’s probably more common today that you have someone with a solar energy system who is looking at an EV, just because the sun is around longer,” said Becca Jones-Albertus, acting deputy assistant secretary of energy renewable by the US Department of Energy. . “But we know that many EV owners are looking to install solar so that it helps with their increased electricity use and can support more economical charging at home.”
Of the 131 million US households, about 4.5 million have added a solar roof, as its benefits become more widely known, according to the DOE’s Office of Solar Energy Technologies. And 2023 set a record with more than 1 million EVs sold in the US
EVs need to plug in to charge and run, but electricity from the grid still often comes from burning fossil fuels, negating some of the environmental benefit of going electric. Sun can fix that. It’s an important point because electricity production and transportation are the two largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore climate change, in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Residential solar electric, or photovoltaic, systems convert the sun’s rays into electricity when they strike a solar panel. If an owner chooses to purchase a set of batteries to pair with the panels, they can have a constant “bank” of energy to draw from. In 2022, batteries will account for nearly a fifth of new home solar systems installed in California, which leads the US rooftop solar market.
Automakers are seeing this diagonal interest and getting into the business several years after Tesla bought solar company SolarCity in 2016 and launched a solar rooftop division.
Some legacy car companies are launching efforts to connect customers with energy services, including solar installation contractors. General Motors’ energy unit, GM Energy, is one example. The automaker wants to offer a one-stop shop for customers looking for home charging, solar technology and other energy management.
“That’s where we see everything working together,” said Derek Sequeira, GM Energy’s director of the EV ecosystem.
Hyundai Home helps the company’s EV customers choose home charging and solar solutions. Ford, too, is dabbling in this business.
But access to the sunroof isn’t fair, so the combination isn’t an option for every EV owner. About half of U.S. households do not have control over their roof, or find it inadequate due to location, space or orientation, according to the DOE’s solar office.
There is pressure to address that. Community solar projects allow renters or condo owners or other communities to have a stake in a small solar array. This type of solar is growing and contributed to the overall record growth in US solar capacity this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Some utilities may not want customers to produce more solar electricity than they need, as it would mean paying them back for the excess in the form of credits.
Installation costs can also be prohibitive. A standard $10,000 system could run $15,000 or more for a consumer, according to the Center for Sustainable Energy, a nonprofit in San Diego, California.
But the cost is falling. In 2010, a rooftop installation could cost $8.70 per watt. That would drop to $3.16 per watt by 2022, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Federal incentives are making residential solar systems more affordable – at the same time incentives are helping EV affordability. The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022, allows consumers to claim 30% of what they put into their system as a credit on their next federal tax bill.
Different states also offer different rebates and incentives. Selgo said his system cost $19,500, but after getting the 30% federal tax rebate and $1,000 from the state of Arizona at the time, he ended up paying out about $12,500.
Jerry Schotz bought two EVs in 2021. He was interested in renewable energy and wanted to go electric for all of his household needs – including an electric lawn mower – he said, so “Solar makes sense. ” It was installed in his home in Champaign, Illinois, last year.
“A lot of people use the sun to power their homes, but we’re powering our home and our cars with the same solar systems,” Schotz said. “When you think about the climate, we are no longer using fossil fuels to drive on the road.”
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Alexa St. is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. John. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Contact her at ast.john@ap.org.
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