Originally Posted By: Nick1994
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: Nick1994
My quick Googling says it costs $3.95 to charge a Tesla.
Solar panels produce a lot more power than that.
Do they ?
How much do YOU think a 4KW panel setup produces in the average 24 hour period ?
As to cost...it's really cheap until enough people use it...road taxes will be applied to the EV meter when there's a critical mass.
I've got a coworker that went from a $300 a month summer electric bill to a $40 a month electric bill. Also a distant family member that has had near $0 electric bills.
That's how feed-in tariffs and rate contracts work.
When solar is generating through the day, and you aren't home using, the power is fed back into the grid (spinning the meter backwards) and paid significantly more than market rate because it is "green". When you come home, particularly in northern climates like mine where it's dark by 5PM at this time of year, you are using power that you've either stored during the day, or that comes from the grid. Enough of a shift in that direction and the value of power after hours goes up. If your buddy is getting $0.30/kWh for his solar feed-in rate, that's artificially high, which is what these programs bank on.
The solar capacity for most people in residential settings is limited by the size of their roof (those unable to put solar "farms" in their backyard). Did the calculator you used bring-in roof size?
You can't go based on prices, because that's not a fixed metric, that's what Shannow is getting at, you need to use actual consumption figures and production figures.
Let's use your Tesla example again.
The Model S 75D has a range of 226 miles @ 110F ambient and 70Mph. On a 90F day, that increases the range to 238 miles. I'd say your climate is more the former, no? But let's average them, so we have a 232 mile range on 75kWh, or 3.1 miles per kWh. That gives us a consumption figure of 13.23kWh for your 41 mile commute example.
Now, say you work every day and never go anywhere on weekends, that's 264.6kWh per month. You can adjust that accordingly based on your driving averages.
There's a solar roof calculator you can use here, and use your actual roof (it uses a map):
http://www.solarroofcalculator.appspot.com/
To figure how much power a solar install at your house can make per day. You then need to factor in the cost of the panels.