Solar Charging a Chevy Volt: What Happens? (March 2020 Update)

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There are a few weird issues when solar charging an EV battery. Thankfully they are minor, not show stoppers. The solar energy collected is efficiently stored in the car's battery, yielding at least 4 miles of driving per day.

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11 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 109

@rhmagalhaes 4 года назад

I came from Sam's channel. Great plug. Great job on the conversion. What we really need to see is the step-by-step so everyone can convert their cars. The Volt is an amazing car with great range. 40 miles is enough for the average commute (20+20). Awesome. Please make more videos about it.

@RajGiandeep 3 года назад

Well done. Keep up your work. This is going to be needed more & more as older electric cars need more help getting more range without charging.

@SolarpunkLife 4 года назад

I'm excited to see more of what you do here!

@MOZOGuitars 2 года назад

Idk how practical this is but it sure is awesome! Nice work brother

@AhA69 4 года назад

Dude, HOLY SHIT YOU DID IT! Amazing! Always imagined doing this to my 2013 Volt!

@ryancrawford2053 Год назад

This is super neat, thanks for the detailed explanation of how you accomplished this

@squidbeard492 2 года назад

We need a straight panel to car charger and eliminate the battery/inverter in-between. The we could sell simple solar panel car covers or make our own to charge cars. I don't know if manufacturers would have to incorporate a standardized dc plug. It would be nice to incorporate more off grid charging without extra batteries being cycled into ewaste

@Doctorbasss Год назад

The Gen 1 can take DC charging power into the J1772 btw.. I tested that! it can take as low as 90Vdc.

@peteinwisconsin2496 5 месяцев назад

Hi: That I know of, All of the built-in EV chargers are based on switchmode topology. Some use a switching input regulators and some use a passive bridge rectifiers. I suspect that the latter is found on the Gen 1. How were you able to determine which type of input rectifier is used? I want to charge a Nissan Leaf with DC but read that it has a switching input rectifier. I don't think that this will work with DC input.

@AhA69 4 года назад

Dude, HOLY SHIT YOU DID IT! Amazing! Always imagined doing this to my 2013 Volt! Sharing this to the Facebook Volt community!

@freshandsaltyjohnny Год назад

I just bought myself a 2016 gen2 volt. Knowing they are discontinued. If they ever do bring back the Volt, I would like to see these features implemented on a gen 3 Volt. 1. Solar roof charging capability 2. Longer EV range 65 miles or 70 miles 3. Level 3 charging capability 4. 1.6 liter engine 200hp would be great 5. more powerful electric motors thus more torque and faster 0-60 foot, 4-5 sec preferred or better 6. More aggressive styling to compete with 2023 Prius 7. AWD with option to run in FWD only mode for mpg (AWD is kind of a safety feature now a days, go drive a Subaru and find out) Will all that being said I'm going to drive the sh*t out of my gen 2 volt. I truly love this car its so awesome! Coming from a Prius owner the gen2 Volt is more of a driver's car, so fun in the mountains. Hope Chevy reads this and brings back the Volt in the near future say 5-6 years from now. When I'll be looking to upgrade.

@WDIO-RADIO 2 года назад

Cool, I wanted to do something similar, but sold mine. I was going to build an Exo-cage from below to put a lot more solar up top extended back to a trailer hitch mounted rear rack to allow for an extended array off the rear of the car. Mine was slated for 1200 watts using Jinko 350 watt modules. I was going to use the buffer battery approach for the charger and interface at the main battery fuse for the charging input. But that was then. I'm glad someone did solar power the VOLT. I wish GM had done so.

@CDP135Z 2 года назад

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the great video. I have a short commute to work and was wondering if it would be effective to add solar to a EV.

@jonsalazar1228 3 года назад

I have a 2014 Cadillac ELR. I only drive it 1-2 days a week so I would love to get one of these for it.

@zer0nix 2 года назад

If you haven't already, you should consider adding some fairings to the panels to make them more streamlined! Also, have you tried measuring the miles per kWh both with and without the panels? I don't wish to discourage you but many vanlifers have found that adding offset panels reduces their mpg by about 2.5g on average, which is equivalent to carrying around thousands of extra pounds of weight! (yet it may still be worth it to offset since the panels get super hot!*) Others have found a minimal impact. It may depend upon how streamlined your car is and the location of the panels, with centered panels more towards the rear appearing to contribute less to drag. Your panels look fine, but I don't think anyone else has done this mod on an actually streamlined relatively teardrop shaped car so I'm very curious to know how your mileage is affected! If the drag is bad enough, it may be more worth it just to add some secondary batteries and charge those at home with your panels. Likewise, I wonder how the mileage would be affected if the panels could be lowered even more or were more in line with the teardrop shape of your car. Gah, if only covid hadn't screwed up the car market, I would be running these tests myself instead of passing on these ideas and hoping someone else takes them up :p *Ps: You can improve panel efficiency by up to 25 percent by cooling them down so I'd also consider adding something that could maybe mist the panels with distilled water

@realsolarcars 2 года назад

Cooling the solar panels would be a very interesting experiment. The solar racing teams spray their panels to cool them while stationary charging. We might try the experiment with fans first. It isn't enough to generate more power. The cooling system needs to have a net energy gain. And hopefully a net financial gain as well. Distilled water isn't cheap at 35 cents per gallon to due to the 3.2kwh to make it at home. And it's about 1 dollar per gallon to buy. The water could be made cheaper with reverse osmosis. There are hybrid PV panels that also do water heating. For this purpose they would be "water cooled solar panels." We'll worry about aerodynamics later. Most of this vehicle's driving is low speed city driving. So we opted for a larger PV panel area over a streamlined design.

@AriasElectronics 2 месяца назад

Good job, bro! I have a 2012 Volt too.

@magnoliastreetproductions3076 2 года назад

keep up the good work ! I saw your interview on the Innovative Sustainablle Solutions page and I enjoy your work !

@nevillecawood3727 24 дня назад

Google Coefficient of Drag (CD) of different shapes. Then you will see why I say: At least attach a piece of half round plastic pipe to the leading edge (front) of the solar panel frame. yes; it will make a difference to range. Especially if you swat up aerodynamics a bit and do a bit more aero modding.

@ProTeslaVolt 2 года назад

Cool man!

@virginiagolembiewski5386 2 года назад

I love what you are doing. Trying to solar charge my 2013 volt

@polarbearigloo 3 года назад

This would be great for my tesla M3. The process would be similar but I would wonder how the software would handle it

@robertmcgill4979 Год назад

Is there something similar out there for a Chevy Bolt? This video is a few years old but I find this fascinating

@realsolarcars Год назад

Unfortunately, adding support for other vehicles is labor intensive with no guarantee of success. We don't have the resources to acquire vehicles for R&D. The newer GM EVs have a simplified setup with 4 contactors compared to the 5 contactors in the G1 Volt. That could be problematic since the drive inverter would detect negative battery voltage when solar charging. That can cause a fault code for contactor stuck closed. We were lucky that the G1 Volt doesn't have stuck contactor detection on the charger DC circuit.

@portagepete1 3 года назад

If ya put on a small trailer hitch you could make a trailer with more panels, great video thanks. another option is put all the panels at home and charge the car there.

@vevenaneathna Год назад

hmm probably keeps the car cooler in the sun.... was thinking about those flexible solar pannels but i think they degrade much more quickly. wonder how the solar panels affect the drag/range of the car on the highway

@pmacgowan 3 года назад

I wish manufactures would just supply a low power DC charge input, well done for working it out anyway

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

Us too. All the car would need is a bit of software and a special J1772 signal for PV chargers. The on board charger can most likely accept 100-300v DC already. The signal would widen voltage limits and enable the MPPT algorithm. This would be great for solar carports. No batteries needed.

@thelondonbroiler 3 года назад

First off, I think your experimentation is great. Another consideration should be, how less efficient will your vehicle be with increased drag and additional weight. I've thought about doing this very thing with my Bolt, so I was very excited to see you had done this. I was considering using three 400 watt LG panels (two on the roof, the other on the hood), running to a 2kw Bluetti "battery power generator," and run 110v evse with a modified "cap plug" j1772 connector that's always plugged into the port, but relay controlled to connect when the ignition is off. Yes going to AC and back to DC is wasteful, but I still think it would make for a effective system still.

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

Thanks! Yes, under some conditions the drag could result in a net loss. The normal usage of this Volt is

@michaeld954 17 дней назад

I have a hitch on my volt Ir would be awesome to have a trailer with panels on top with the panels on my car probably use the flexible stick on 1s

@InnovativeSustainableSolutions 4 года назад

I'm gonna have to check out your website. Love that you got all the data auto-upload, that's awesome. The air intake reroute looks clean, and the 36v to 380v voltage step up. Are you able to charge the main battery with the vehicle turned off? I've been wanting to connect the solar directly to main traction battery of my Leaf, but the battery bms is connected to a computer, that gets very upset if it detects that the module voltages have changed while the vehicle was turned off. Regarding the discrepancy in harvested solar power vs. realized range: What was the difference in temperature between the two readings. An air temp increase of 20F could result in the mileage increase you observed

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

Good point about the battery temperature! That could be what's going on. AM air 48f, battery 49f PM air 64f, battery 59f The 12v charger runs all the time so it will provide some power to 12v devices while driving. The step-up charger operates only when parked and turned off right now. It yields to the vehicles own systems because having the contactors unexpectedly closed is a serious fault for most EVs. I power up the BMS while charging to monitor voltage and temperature. I might have gotten lucky by the fact that the Volt has separate contactors for the charger which are not monitored as closely as the main contactors. Do you know of anyone who has done experiments like this with the LEAF? Hopefully it would be possible to charge a LEAF without adding another set of contactors to block the rest of the car from detecting the voltage when the car is off. PowerElectronicsBlog says here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tcskDh9CGmY.html (open eddiekk's comment thread) that the charger can go down to ~200w. I wouldn't count on it being efficient at that power level. Does your LEAF have a CHAdeMO port? Since it can be used for power export / V2H it should be fine for DC trickle charge. ~James

@rhmagalhaes 4 года назад

And here I am !!!

@IMightBeJesus69 2 года назад

Have you seen the flexible solar panels?? They would actually suit this project better I believe

@realsolarcars 2 года назад

Yes. Flexible panels might be a good overall solution as they will eliminate the significant cost of the roof rack. As well as reduce weight and drag. There are a few reasons we didn't. 1. Higher cost per watt. 2. Concerns about the durability of flexible panels. 3. Sizing. It might be a bad idea to have flexible panels hang over the edge of the roof. We think we could fit 200w of flexible solar panels on the roof without trouble. The roof has a hump for the antenna. The rigid solar panels we used extend a few inches past the roof on all sides but does not cause any inconvenience to daily use of the vehicle. We upgraded the panels since making this video so the car now has 420w total. 4. We had hoped that vehicles with a more favorable roof area like a LEAF could use a standard grid-tie 60 or 72 cell panel for lowest cost.

@thebigmann81 Год назад

Those are good to put on hood too

@themodfather9382 Год назад

@@realsolarcars Definitely do the flexible panels. Solar Prius exists already with smaller panels. They even go around the XM Radio antenna. There's such thing as weatherproof rigid thin panels as well.

@thebigmann81 Год назад

I would love to see it at 5 miles and see how it goes up.

@rhmagalhaes 4 года назад

I watched it again...

@BillHallProductions 2 года назад

I can't get your order form to open

@darrelljones4578 2 года назад

I am using 18 Volt @ 50 wat Soler to make 72 Volt @ 50 wat charging my 2011 Vantage Electric Green Truck's agm batteries and have been for a year-and-a-half now.

@Tay-ky3fi 3 года назад

Hey dude! Thank you for this video! Please keep sending more. I want to do this on a mitsubishi outlander. What do you think?

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

Probably won't know without trying it. It's a matter of working around the car's safety checks. (Voltage present while off is a fault because it could mean that the contactors are welded closed. The car doesn't know that the contactors are closed because we wanted them closed. Our board can detect loss of isolation.) We were lucky that the Volt doesn't monitor the charger connection for voltage. Or our system shuts down faster than the car can detect a problem.

@Tay-ky3fi 3 года назад

@@realsolarcars how can I collaborate with you? I'm in Colorado.. I don't have much true technical education in the field.. but I'm motivated :)

@user-oz7bx4tx8e 3 года назад

When he speaks, it's difficult for the layperson to understand. Basically, how can I buy a system to solar charge my volt? Is anyone selling something?

@Carcajoo121 2 года назад

How did connect your solar panel into the Voltec system ?

@bafangbg6858 3 года назад

Hi. Which high voltage cables you are connecting the DC to DC 380v to?

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

The HV cables to the AC charger.

@pawejarek7218 3 года назад

Hello, How much cost this DC-DC inverter? Its any possible to buy one ?

@edge2science Год назад

attempting to charge my car through a bank of lead acid batteries via an 8000W Inverter this system would run about 5 minutes then drop out on two counts not enough current from the batter banks to sustain the inverter minimum and the cars 110V AC system not seeing the minimum 6 amps. What was at first confusing the total battery at 1000's of Whr. by the numbers should have been more than adequate however what is not posted in specifications the minutes full value of the Amp hours may be sustained by the batteries chemistry. said differently this batterie bank total capacity adding the sum of amp hours was thousands which would be one amp delivered for 1000's of hours not 1000's of amps in one hour.

@joshseal2000 4 года назад

Amazing creation here! I'm thinking about building a solar carport for my driveway so I can charge my Mini Cooper SE. If I want to use the charge port, instead of digging into the car electronics, must I add a battery buffer, even if I could add 700 or 800 watts of panels on the carport? I'm assuming I need to in order to prevent the car from starting and stopping charging too regularly (due to clouds or in the morning / evening) - but I'd love to find a simple way to do this to minimize cost & components needed. Keep up the great work!

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

1. You'll rarely get the nameplate power of a solar panel. So plan on using 1200-2000w of panels. There is a lot of energy in the morning and evening where the power output is much less than noon. 2. In theory the EVSE and on board charger could accept 120-240vdc. In practice the Volt seems to do a voltage drop check that reduces the charge rate from my small 120v test battery. Solar panels also have a voltage drop under load that could make the car view them as an inferior electrical circuit. Maybe this algorithm would function as a crude MPPT or maybe it would totally prevent charging. I have no idea how the Mini would react to such a supply and there is a chance it could destroy the charger. Ideally there should be a J1772 setting for "off grid solar charger" that tells the car accept a wide voltage range and do MPPT tracking.

@joshseal2000 4 года назад

@@realsolarcars I can tell the mini to charge at ~700 Watts, but that's the slowest which is a shame. If the charge rate could be made lower then the solar array and battery buffer could be much smaller for a plug in setup. Anyhow, this is super useful.

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

@@joshseal2000 Have you watched my video on supercapacitors? It's basically an engineering analysis of how big a buffer is needed. Spoiler: it's a $350 LTO battery.

@joshseal2000 4 года назад

@@realsolarcars just watched it. Super useful, thanks!

@lennieadi 3 года назад

Would 2 x 400w panels on the roof worked for you or is there a voltage issue. I'm non tech 🤷‍♂️

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

400w panels are a lot bigger than 200w panels. They just wouldn't fit well. The converter can be modified to match different panels.

@lennieadi 3 года назад

@@realsolarcars I see. Thanks for reply. Good luck with everything. I’ll keep watching and rebbe to give you a like.

@Hamdad 3 года назад

Good job.

@MultiMonitor 2 года назад

I wish my volt was white, looks so much better.

@plojm123 4 года назад

Where did you get that dc to dc converter, is it something you can buy or did you build it. I have a cmax energi and its 84 cells at 4.2v and I want to add solar on my car

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

I'm planning to sell converters since I couldn't find one on the market. It wasn't easy to design and I think more people would build solar cars if they could get the parts. There are times I wish I bought an energi because it would be easier to access the battery with it in the trunk. The converter would easily handle the different voltage.

@plojm123 4 года назад

@@realsolarcars lol thanks keep me posted I'll keep following ur channel

@carterjohnson25 3 года назад

I hate to be the one to point this out, because it's a very cool project. But you're losing more than 5 mi of range in drag coefficient losses...

@carterjohnson25 3 года назад

Maybe a better way to state the question is have you charted the curve on how long it has to charge and the distance driven between charges before the sun power input is greater than the drag output. For example if you let it charge for 2 weeks and drive it once you're winning with the sun. If you drive it 60 mi every day with those panels and just let it charge during the day, your net negative because of drag

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

@@carterjohnson25 It would be hard to accurately measure the additional drag for creating such a chat. And speed makes a big difference in drag. I drive the car

@StipeSurlin 4 года назад

So what i need to charge Volt with home solar panel? How large panels i need to buy if I want to charge on level one?

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

I'd say the minimum would be 4 of the 60 cell panels or 1200 watts. A 60 cell mono-crystalline panel is usually rated at 300w or more. Maybe 2400 watts to fully recharge most days. Your mileage may vary depending on climate. The exact equipment will vary whether the system is grid-tied, off grid, or off grid without a battery. An off grid system would use the same parts that Innovative Sustainable Solutions has in the trunk of his car. I have a hunch that the gen 1 Volt can charge from 120v or 240v DC, but haven't been able to test longer than a few seconds.

@scottkolaya2110 4 года назад

I love your live stats on the website, great job, but could you make it longer than 5 days? From what I see at the moment on there, you have zero kWh from the grid and that's awesome. Since your panels only generate a little over a 1 kWh per day, Is your commute only 4 miles round trip a day, or do you work at home and don't really use the car much?

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

Done. Wow, over 2 weeks since grid charging! It seems to be a combination of moderate temperatures, clear skies, and driving less. Averages were 5.5 miles/day, 3.46miles/kwh, 1.61kwh/day, so the battery would be slowly depleting.

@scottkolaya2110 4 года назад

@@realsolarcars Awesome! looks great. Thanks.

@scottkolaya2110 4 года назад

@@realsolarcars How do you log drive and regen kWh per day?

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

@@scottkolaya2110 I have a Raspberry Pi that receives CAN bus data from the car. It's connected to the high voltage management bus. It gets voltage and current measurements from the battery's existing sensors. Energy flow into and out of the battery are broken up based on the direction of the current. The Raspberry Pi does the integration of current measurements to get kWh values. I would like to add miles driven and gasoline consumption sometime, but that information is on the main OBD CAN bus, so I would need 2 CAN bus interfaces to do that. The solar charger sends its data over the same CAN bus as used for the battery. The integrators are reset daily to get the numbers for the website. The website stores the complete archive of data in CSV format. The stats page is configured to only show a certain number of records for neatness. So it was easy to extend the number of records shown. If there is demand for it I will release the code for the datalogger.

@michaeld954 2 года назад

Is there a way to use the nissan leaf inverter to solar charge the car and and directly use the power of the battery to power house hold items without buying a separate inverter

@realsolarcars 2 года назад

There is a good possibility that the charger could accept 100-250v directly from solar panels. The charge current would need to be controlled by CAN bus not j1772 to do MPPT. There are not many household items that are rated to run on 400v DC. Most switching power supplies are rated for 240v AC and should also work on 340v DC, the peak voltage for 240v AC. Nissan LEAF batteries have a chemistry that maintains a higher voltage. So if discharged to 350v it would have almost no energy left. The drive inverter is not useful for this either. It needs output filters to generate a clean sine wave. Then there would be the issue that its software was made for driving a motor not generating a constant voltage and frequency sine wave.

@michaeld954 2 года назад

@@realsolarcars im basically looing for a wrecked ev that i could turn into a power wall/station probably get one for 4500 versus telsa power wall at 10000

@squidbeard492 2 года назад

I'd use server rack batteries ($1500 for 5kwh) just for the safety factor of possible unknown damage. Also strange voltages mean you might have issues connecting an inverter without extra research first.

@dtloveless 2 года назад

What size panels did you use? I'd love to do this to my Volt for my senior project!

@realsolarcars Год назад

We've since upgraded to Hightec Solar 210w panels. They are 1.493 x 0.678 m. That's basically the same size as the 200w bifacial panels shown in this video. Those were also from Hightec Solar. Awesome! What are you studying? Something to keep in mind is that we would like to have this available for G1 Volt as a plug and play kit, within the same time frame as a senior project. It's probably necessary for you to demonstrate original work, not simply buying a kit and getting code from github. Or the appearance of such. We also might enter this project in the Hackaday contest. If you have a G2 Volt (2016+) then you have a good challenging project. There is a lot of unglamorous work involved with the testing and verification of the code. However that is work that instructors would like to see, we think.

@203laurenn Год назад

Incredible

@darrelljones4578 Год назад

have you thought of changing your engine for an electric motor

@realsolarcars Год назад

Tri-motor Volt. Woot!

@jpl9148 3 года назад

I would like to test your converter in my 2016 Chevrolet Spark EV. I'm in Vancouver Canada

@japanluv 3 года назад

I need this on my 2014 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV :D UK sucks though on sunny days so I don’t know if it’s worth it.

@TheSoilandGreen 3 года назад

My 100w panels are 5 amp so that would be 10 amps

@mz8755 Год назад

can you charge it while driving?

@realsolarcars Год назад

Theoretically yes. In practice these solar panels barely generate more than the 250w idle consumption of the Volt. For the programming, charging while driving is a different state than charging while parked. This converter connects in parallel with the on board charger. The HV lines to the on board charger are not energized while driving. Our new converter board can do that. It would just take careful testing since the car's computer would be controlling some contactors and the converter board would be controlling other contactors.

@BillHallProductions 2 года назад

Oh my god I want this

@dantsmith16 2 года назад

Which roof rack is that?

@realsolarcars 2 года назад

Yakima Jetstream. The channels fit 3/8 carriage bolts. Really convenient for mounting random objects to the rack.

@lennieadi 3 года назад

Does anyone know the tech that goes into the dc fast and level 2 charging machines. Can this be replicated in an off grid situation with the required amps an EV needs?

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

An off grid DC-DC fast charger is available from EVTV. store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=dcdcchargestation Very expensive though. For level 2 just get a big inverter. OpenEVSE has a feature to charge only from excess solar power. It was designed for grid tied systems, but should be adaptable to off grid.

@lennieadi 3 года назад

@@realsolarcars Thanks for reply. Interesting. At least I’m not ready for a few years yet so Hopefully by then the price will be much cheaper. I’ll look in it though. Thanks again. These online families are a wealth of information,support and passion. Love it. Thanks again. Blessings to you.

@manikdesign 3 года назад

Damn buddy you did what I’ve been trying to figure out for over a decade! Please tell Me how I can do if for outlander phev

@jollygreen4662 4 года назад

Can this be done in the chevy bolt?

@realsolarcars 4 года назад

It's likely. Would need to check the Bolt service manual for more confimation. But we can't really know until it's tested.

@jollygreen4662 4 года назад

@@realsolarcars if there is a way. I would hire you do help me do this

@minorukurata 3 года назад

I was monitoring my charing with 2011 volt and it accept 3A

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

Were you trying to reduce the charge current or did it just happen? We've seen the Volt reduce charge power if the source has excess resistance. We tried to reduce the current but abandoned the effort because: 1. 300w power only happens for maybe 5% of the day. We need charging down to 50w for a good energy harvest from a 400w array. 2. The onboard 3kw charger is likely not efficient at 10% or less of full power.

@minorukurata 3 года назад

@@realsolarcars great information, so do you think if will more efficient to use micro inverter? And with ongrid plus to the internal charger

@minorukurata 3 года назад

@@realsolarcars how do you guess sono motors is doing to do it?

@realsolarcars 3 года назад

@@minorukurata Sono Motors probably uses a dedicated DC-DC converter for the solar power. Since their car has more solar power than ours, they could use the grid charger for solar charging. But this would require the solar array be switched off when charging from the grid, or using the Vehicle to Load outlet. The microinverter has a DC-DC converter and DC-AC converter. Using just the DC-DC would always be more efficient.

@minorukurata 3 года назад

@@realsolarcars thanks for ur answer I was thinking doing with prius also