Sunshine Is Actually The Cheapest Fuel For Your Car
May 27, 20262 hours
Zachary Shahan
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I wrote an article last week about how it’s much cheaper to charge my electric car than people think, or electric cars in general.
I knew this would be the logical followup article. We don’t have solar, since we live in a townhouse where we don’t have control over our roof. (There are ways to force it through, but that comes with some big risks we are financially equipped to storm.) However, if you have the opportunity, then sunshine can definitely provide the cheapest fuel on the planet! (Or off the planet for that matter….)
The fact of the matter is, if you have solar panels on your roof, the long-term average cost of electricity is probably lower than what you can get from the grid, especially if you really take into account the lifetime of the solar panels. Also, if you’ve got those solar panels on your roof, every extra kWh you generate from them costs $0.00. If you’re in a case where any extra electricity you generate doesn’t get compensated or gets compensated at a super low rate, then using that electricity instead to charge your car means extremely low or no incremental cost.
Under that article mentioned at the top, one of our longtime readers and regular commenters, “appliance5000,” provided a great comment on the matter as well:
“Yes. My home charging costs me about $8 for 250 miles in spring and summer. Humble bragging: This is my first year with community solar — my costs are $0. I know I know — solar costs money. But think of it this way: The only ICE equivalent would be to set up a drill rig, a refinery, and a pump on your land. And even then, you’re not powering you house etc….
“It’s kind of a beautiful thing — sort of like magic: In a field not far away, a lovely array sits — surrounded by distinctive brown cows with a broad white center stripe — and makes electricity. If I can’t use it all, I get a credit. If I wanted, I could run the house off a home battery at night — and recharge it in the morning.”
Indeed! Brilliant! Even better that this is a non-rooftop example to show what else is possible. If only we all had the ability to buy into a community solar garden.
Another commenter, incidentally, also had an example of low-cost community solar to share. “Madcalf” wrote: “Here in Denver, summertime off-peak is 7 cents per kWh, and off-peak is 9pm – 5pm, 20 hours per day. Plus, it’s all 24 hours per day on weekends. I save an additional 10% through the Neighborhood Sun community solar program I’m on, not that 10% of 7 cents is much, but just goes to show how insanely cheap it is to charge our EVs here. We can charge our model Y for right around the cost of one gallon of gas.” Wowza. Nice!
There are a lot of comments under that article, including more referencing solar. The short and sweet of it all: sunshine is actually the cheapest fuel for your car.
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