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Portable Solar charging station
Bringing an old thread back from the dead, did you ever find a way to make this happen? I am thinking to do something similar but on a slightly larger scale and even more remote. I am thinking a foldout set of up to 10 panels to charge a Tesla Cybertruck while in camp.
OpenEVSE Support
Charging an EV requires AC power, it is possible to charge in an off grid setup. You will need:
Panels
Inverter(s)
Batteries
Monitoring system to communicate with OpenEVSE to increase, decrease, stop as solar output varies
OpenEVSE Advanced station
have successfully completed this project using Victron hardware and 1200W of used solar panels. i have a complete design package, but let me give you an idea of how it works.
1. the limit is the lowest charge rate the vehicle can support, which is 6A for most vehicles. there is no "trickle charging" to my knowledge
2. to attain the 6A the panels charge a 100AH battery. when the battery is above a 90% state of charge, (SOC) the inverter is enabled and starts charging thru the Level 2 charger (we are using several types, not all work well)
3. when the battery is at 50% SOC, the inverter is disabled until the battery returns to 90%. so this is an "on/off" operation
during the summer we can add 3-4 KWH of charge. this equates to 9 to 12 miles added on the vehicles we test with.
the biggest hassle seems to be deploying the solar panels. we're trying several things, but none are convenient.
System cost is about $1,400 US. a fun project, but not much return on investment
Daniel Near
I was considering finding a way to make a sliding roof rack that can hold 4 full-size solar panels that could be opened up when the car is parked and used to trickle-charge the battery when plug-in power wasn't available.
It started when I found this deal:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Grape-Solar-265-Watt-Polycrystalline-Solar-Panel-4-Pack-GS-P60-265x4/206365811
1.06kw worth of panels.. In my ideal scenario, When folded out, it would be about 5'5" x 13'. Compacted would be similar to having a turtle pack on the roof of the car.
Is anyone attempting anything similar currently? The one other project I saw looks like it's specifically needing an internet connection to feed data between the solar array/inverters and the charger. Since this would be remote, it wouldn't have internet access.