Sun2Car@GAP – On-site Consumption of Photovoltaic Energy with Electric Vehicles

The significant and enduring expansion of decentralized, private photovoltaic systems as well as the trend towards electric vehicles offers new opportunities to increase the on-site consumption of energy. For environmental and economic reasons, a specific charge of the own electric vehicle – including the use of an additional stationary battery storage – could be a common model for the future and support the roll-out of electric vehicles and solar panels.

The following figure shows a possible situation in future private household. Here, the household load profile – in 15-minute mean values – is shown in black. While consumption is low at night, it rises in the morning at 6:00 o’clock, only to be constantly low again after the user has left house. After returning shortly after 12:00 o’clock the consumption increases sharply, for example, by turning on a washing machine. During the evening hours, a mean consumption is adjusted by various devices. In the graphics the generation of electricity of the photovoltaic panel (cloudy day) is shown in yellow.

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Figure 1:  Load curve of household consumption and electricity production

In the project Sun2Car@GAP – in the context of the “model community for electromobility in Garmisch-Partenkirchen” – ten Audi A1 e-tron will be allocated to test persons with photovoltaic systems for about half a year. The aim is to analyze the extent to which electric vehicles can be charged by the self-generated photovoltaic current.

In this joint research project with the AUDI AG and the Technical University of Munich, the Research Center for Energy Economics focuses on the following three aspects:

  • Increasing the solar share in the propulsion energy of electric vehicles by situational controlled charging and integration of stationary battery storages
  • Determination of the influence of such combinations on the power grid
  • Consideration of a possible use of Second Life batteries as stationary battery storages

During the project runtime until the end of 2014, various publications will be written. We will inform you on the website of FfE.