Charge the car while shopping

Driving a plug-in car with a short electric-only range and avoiding using gasoline is becoming more and more convenient. Not only can we charge our car at home (and at work, on the rare occasions when we go to the office), but public charging stations are everywhere -- at shopping centers, public offices, in parking garages, and at parks -- and many of them are free. Charging our car is generally more convenient, much cheaper, and more pleasant than stopping for gasoline would be.

Since our PHEV doesn't have quite the range to get us to town and back again on EV only, we've taken to parking at the car charger while shopping.

Each of the grocery stores we prefer has a car charger a block away. One of us stays with the cart while the other walks to the car and brings it back, if we've bought more than it's comfortable to carry.

When we are downtown eating out, we park at the charging station in the parking garage and get a full battery for much less than the waiter's tip.

We also charge our car while we are at the farmer's market. We think of the electric car charging station as our own VIP parking space. Often, parking at the car charger is closer than the nearest non-charger parking for the farmer's market, and the charge is free.

Fuel-Free Back Up Power

Usually PV systems are backed up with generators, but they are loud, burn fuel, and are inconvenient and expensive to buy and to run.

We needed to upgrade our electrical system to 240V to run electric appliances like a stove, and we needed more energy storage capacity to get through a few cloudy days. We added another battery bank (more about that in another post) and an 8 kW 240V Outback inverter.

Our solar contractor Zeke Yewdall of Dark Forest Solar offered to find buyers for the old 120V equipment, but I had a crazy idea that just might work. Why not use the old solar PV system to back up the new one, I asked?

We hired our neighbors Robert and Max of Max Electric to rewire our electrical panel for 240V, and relocate the breakers for the circuits we wanted to back up (well pump, essential lights, electronics) to one leg of the panel, putting less important circuits on the second leg.

When the new solar system is running, we have 240V and can power the stove, as well as all the 120V circuits on both legs of the panel. When the energy in the batteries falls below a setpoint (which is pretty low since the new batteries are not lead acid and can tolerate being deep-discharged without reducing their lifespan), the old 120V system takes over and we have another 10 kWh of capacity on backup power. All without running a generator or using fuel!

Radiant heat

Though the previous owner designed the house to be thermally efficient, we found that the existing dark ceramic tile/concrete slab floor was always colder than the air, and was unpleasantly cold in the winter. It did not function as a thermal mass to heat the house because there is not sufficient thermal gain through the windows to bring such a large thermal mass above the room temperature.

So we added radiant thermal tubing to the floor, and in the living areas we added insulative wood on top. The house is already much warmer, without even running hot water through the hydronic system. Once we finish the flooring, the next step will be to add the equipment to heat and circulate the water.