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Book An InstallationWhat is a solar car battery charger?
What is Solar energy?
Solar energy can be produced anywhere that the sun reaches and is the earth’s most obtainable source of energy. Solar power is the process of harnessing the energy from the sun and using solar panels to transform sunlight into electricity. Solar panels commonly referred to as; PV standing for ‘photovoltaic’. Work when 3 types of light are converted using cells at an atomic level into electricity. You can now find solar farms both on land and floating on water, generating power for thousands of homes and becoming more popular around the globe making appearances in France, Netherlands, America, UK and many more countries as a source of green energy.
How is solar energy used for transportation?
In 2017 the world’s first solar car charger the zappi was invented by Robin Richard and Lee Sutton for smart home energy management company myenergi. This pioneering technology was a monumental breakthrough and influential product for other electric car chargers to follow. The solar car battery charger can work like any standard charger if you don’t own solar but has eco settings that allow you to take electricity produced by solar panels and send it straight into charging an electric car or motorbike. This innovative practice, allows you to be driving on sunshine! Railroads, subways, buses, planes, cars and even roads can all be powered by solar, and solar transit is becoming a popular offering in the renewable energy sector.
What is a solar charger?
What is a solar car battery charger?
Charge for free from solar energy
A solar car battery charger works by allowing you to use excess solar to power up your car. Generating solar energy requires solar panels or PV to be fitted to your home or place of work, but the energy generated through the solar panels is totally free!
Charge even when it isn’t sunny
The amount of electricity solar panels produce is constantly fluctuating depending on the quality, brightness and length of daylight available. There is a misconception that solar panels require direct sunlight, and although they would naturally work better when the sun is gleaming and the sky is blue, solar panels are more reliant on the photons present in natural daylight, which means even on an overcast day at the height of spring and summer, you’d expect an ample level of generation.
In fact, we tend to spend more time outside in the summer and use far less electricity, for which there tends to be a large amount of surplus energy generated. In most cases that surplus energy is pumped back into the grid and somebody else would utilise that extra power you’ve generated, however, if you have a diverter such as the eddi and an eco-smart car charger such as the zappi, you are able to utilise this surplus energy by instead diverting it into charging your electric vehicle.
How do solar panels charge my car battery?
Light energy produced by the sun is called a photon, It is the most basic, fundamental particle of all light. It is these photons in natural daylight that are converted by solar panel cells to produce electricity. This small bundle of electromagnetic energy is constantly in motion. Simply put, a solar panel works by allowing photons, or particles of light, to bounce into electrons setting them free from atoms, generating a flow of electricity.
Solar panels are comprised of many, smaller parts called photovoltaic cells. (Photovoltaic, as described above simply means the conversion of sunlight into electricity.) Solar panels use the spectrum of colours we are used to seeing (visible) but also ultraviolet and infrared which cannot be seen by the human eye.
The zappi is clever enough to communicate with your PV system via a little device called harvi, which acts as a messenger by sensing and communicating import and export data to other myenergi devices. Those devices can then shout “hang on, don’t fire my excess energy back out to the grid, i’ll use it instead”. zappi happens to use this surplus energy to charge your vehicle whereas eddi, would use it to instead heat your water. How the energy is used by the zappi is determined by your requirements and preference, via the mode you select.
How is energy diverted to power my solar car battery charger?
Introducing eddi: the solar power diverter
Solar diverters take excess energy produced from your renewable energy sources such as solar PV and diverts it into a designated appliance such as an immersion heater or underfloor heating. The myenergi eddi utilises this leftover’ energy making the most of the 100% green energy.
Rather than exporting it back to the grid, your power generation investment becomes more efficient, product diverting the power back to your heating systems.
