Portable solar charger

[KyleBeem]

I know that it wouldn’t be feasible to add enough solar cells to full charge a vehicle in a short period of time, but is it possible to have added a 100watt foldable solar cell for emergencies? Let’s say you are out and about driving off-road and lose track of time and you realize that you are 50 miles from the closest road or cell tower and you run out of juice. This would be something that you might have to sit all day to get a decent charge but it would be something that could get you out of a pinch.

 

[Chaz26]

I feel like rather than Scout offering that, it's probably something that would be best bought from a third party for the people that might want to have something like that. I doubt sales would be that high but that's just my opinion.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

The main issue with solar is that you'll also need an accessory power station unless you can carry enough panels to either:

1. Generate >800 volts (in the Scout; 400 in a Lightning) at a decent amperage for direct DC charging--this is just not going to happen.
2. Generate >1.4 kW constant power with a 120V inverter to power a L1 EVSE (there are major challenges with this since EVSEs are sensitive to fluctuating power.

When I'm out camping, I bring a 5 kWh accessory power station that powers our fridge, cooktop, etc. During the day I have 200-800 watts of panels that I set out to recharge this power station. At night, I plug in a Level 1 EVSE to trickle charge the Lightning until the accessory battery is down to about 10-20%. This gives me about 30 miles over a weekend.

It's inefficient, but you can't directly charge an EV with solar panels--you have to store enough energy to provide reliable, clean power to the EVSE.

 

[oldgeeksguide]

The main issue with solar is that you'll also need an accessory power station unless you can carry enough panels to either:

1. Generate >800 volts (in the Scout; 400 in a Lightning) at a decent amperage for direct DC charging--this is just not going to happen.
2. Generate >1.4 kW constant power with a 120V inverter to power a L1 EVSE (there are major challenges with this since EVSEs are sensitive to fluctuating power.

When I'm out camping, I bring a 5 kWh accessory power station that powers our fridge, cooktop, etc. During the day I have 200-800 watts of panels that I set out to recharge this power station. At night, I plug in a Level 1 EVSE to trickle charge the Lightning until the accessory battery is down to about 10-20%. This gives me about 30 miles over a weekend.

It's inefficient, but you can't directly charge an EV with solar panels--you have to store enough energy to provide reliable, clean power to the EVSE.

Good points. In addition, we should understand the numbers here, in the example above, being 50 miles away from charging with a 100 W panel, assuming an optimistic 5 mi per kWh, if you go slow, it would take 50 hours of full sunlight, eg a week or more in the summer. Maybe a 1kw set of cells would help, but 100W is not really practical.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Good points. In addition, we should understand the numbers here, in the example above, being 50 miles away from charging with a 100 W panel, assuming an optimistic 5 mi per kWh, if you go slow, it would take 50 hours of full sunlight, eg a week or more in the summer. Maybe a 1kw set of cells would help, but 100W is not really practical.

Yeah, 5 miles per kWh in a truck/SUV is truly very optimistic, but maybe possible if you're really worried about range and you stick to 25-ish mph without much acceleration or elevation gain. If you're hoping for an additional 50 miles of range, and you can get an efficiency of 5 miles/kWh, that means you need 10 kWh. A 100 Watt (0.1 kW) panel, assuming perfect performance, will need 100 hours of sunlight. This is why I carry up to 800 Watts of panels, depending on my trip plans.

Assuming 800 Watts of actual production for 8 hours (we usually camp in the southwest so typically have 8-14 hours of good sun), that's 6.4 kWh, but let's drop it to 4 kWh total added to the truck due to inefficiencies and use of the fridge, etc.

Adding 4 kWh per day will get me about 12 miles per day with a more realistic 3 miles/kWh on forest service roads.

When we're camping, we often have many more hours of sunlight and when that's the case, the 5 kWh power station will be full pretty early in the day, so I will plug in the truck early.