Homeowner Blog

As of Wednesday 10th June, the UK hit a huge milestone of going two months without burning any coal for electricity generation. This is due to a combination of the reduced national energy consumption since the start of lockdown and the high investment in renewable energy over the past decade. Approximately 800,000 homes now have solar PV installed, helping to contribute to the decarbonisation of the grid, while also reducing their energy bills.

As electricity generation continues to decarbonise, the next logical step is for the transport sector to shift away from fossil fuels and towards electric vehicles. Over the past couple of months, the number of vehicles sold has dropped considerably. Electric and hybrid vehicles, however, feature more heavily than usual in the ‘top 10 models sold’ and more Tesla Model 3s have been sold over the past two months than any other car.

With the number of homes generating their own clean energy via solar PV and the number of electric vehicles on the road growing, we thought we’d take some time to analyse the benefits of pairing a domestic solar PV system with an electric car to quantify the potential financial savings.

Image source: Joseph Brent.

The government has plans to phase out petrol and diesel cars, with sales of new combustion engine models to be banned by 2030 and a desire for almost every van and car to be zero emission by 2050. At the end of 2018, electric vehicles accounted for only 0.5% of the vehicles on the road. A lot therefore needs to be done if the government’s targets are to be reached.

Is now the time to buy an electric car?

Over the past year there have been a couple of fairly large changes which have impacted the payback period of a solar PV installation. Firstly the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) closed for new applicants at the end of March 2019 and then the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) was brought into effect at the start of this year.

Many of our customers are keen to use as much of the solar energy that their home generates as possible in the home. Not only will this reduce bills, it will also increase energy independence.

This week saw the government bring forward the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035.

One of the most pressing challenges in encouraging people to switch to electric cars is building an extensive charging network. Most people charge at home, but there is always going to be a time when you need to top up on the go. A novel solution is to bolster the number of available chargers by opening up privately owned points for public use - peer-to-peer (P2P) electric vehicle charging.

The electric car revolution is well underway and many people in the UK are now taking delivery of their Tesla Model 3. But have you considered how you’ll be charging your new vehicle? What’s the best EV charger for Tesla cars?

The government says it wants the UK to be the best place in the world to build and own an electric vehicle.

To support this, it needs the National Grid to be smart, with a finely tuned set of tools available to balance demand and supply.

With this in mind, the government has announced that from July 2019, the grant of £350 per chargepoint available for home and workplace chargepoints will only be given to people installing smart chargers to charge their electric car.