Solar Power's impact on EV charging

There are, at the moment, many different things all happening at the same time in the world of electricity and electric vehicles. It's hard sometimes to keep it all straight and - in all honesty - it may not be possible to keep it all straight anyway.

However, it is important to at least understand some of the big things that are changing. One big thing is that solar and wind energy are upending many long held assumptions about the cost of electricity over the day. Pretty much everyone in a developed economy is long familiar with the idea of night-time electricity rates being cheaper than daytime rates. It's a long-held idea, but it's not really true any more in any general sense.

Daytime electricity is often cheaper than night-time. Not always, but often.

Energy at € -20/MWh in mid afternoon. Approx €35/MWh in the night. UK, July 2024

Again, I want to be clear. It is also true to say that the price of night-time electricity is still often cheaper than daytime electricity. My main or even only point is that it's often not.

(While this article mostly uses examples from Europe, the same issue arises in the USA and elsewhere. Here's an article in The Economist from a few weeks prior to this post. The article shows that - in California - the issue arises most days.)

The sun doesn't shine at night so there's a whole additional source of energy on the grid in the daytime that isn't there at night. And it's an increasingly large source of power. Solar is coming on in leaps and bounds.

While it's currently most common in summertime, solar can be so large in mid afternoon as to result in afternoon electricity being cheaper than overnight electricity. It can even have negative energy costs (you'll still have to pay for the transport, for all the levies). The same can happen overnight in winter with windy night. But the effect of solar is also spreading fast into the spring and autumn months.

So, if you're charging a fleet, what does this mean? Well, it means that your assumption that overnight charging will always be cheapest isn't true any more. That can be really important in how you select a charging solution and how you design an operational cycle for your fleet. The idea that you should plug your fleet in at 6pm and charge them overnight can - as the charts below show - result in significant extra costs for charging. Significant. 6-10pm is still the most expensive and that IS still (almost) always true.

There's no silver bullet to get cheap electricity all the time, but DockChain can help you a lot. Talk to us to find out how.

Charts all from Nordpool.

France, Germany, NL and Denmark all showing the same pattern.

Interesting on that image to look at France. Nuclear, I guess.

GB - electricity stays expensive overnight.

Often, the afternoon is merely almost as cheap as nighttime. But look at 8am and 8pm!

Now, you might think "You're cherrypicking! Those days aren't typical! He's cherrypicking!"

Go look for yourself. The Nordpool link is above. You'll still see plenty of days where the world was like we all remember. But the world has changed.

And yeah, I'm looking for US and Canadian curves. Not sure where to find them yet. Meantime, here's an article in The Economist from a few weeks prior to this post. The article shows that - in California - the issue arises most days. California is sunny, I guess!

Meantime, if you're interested in the GB market and how to optimize your power use, Mike Davies is the man to call. ClearCost Energy.

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