Solar PV, Hybrid Inverter and Electric Vehicle Charger

[SimonR]

I'm considering buying a domestic 4kW PV with 6kWh of battery storage and a 5kW hybrid inverter from Sungrow.
My problem is that wife's electric car has a 7kW Podpoint charger. I assumed that the hybrid inverter would pull power from the grid when the house demand exceeds 5kW, but there's no mention of that in the manual.

So my question is how are installers dealing with situations where there's an EV charger which wants to draw more power than the hybrid inverter can provide?

I guess some options are:
1 Keep the car charger connected straight to the grid.
2 Install a higher power inverter (the domestic ones all seem to be <5kW).

Do I have a problem?
Thanks
Simon

 

[whinmoor]

Have you made a G59 application to find out whether you can fit an inverter larger than 16A? If you get knocked back, you might need to re-think.

 

[Mitch C]

I've 4KWP PV and inventor and a 7KW fast charger. I've a similar problem although in reverse. I want to only draw the power when the sun shines rather than import from the grid. I don't have batteries. I've just bought a evse charger that pulls 2300 watts 10amps. I just turn it off via home automation when the suns not shining.

This charger might do the job

zappi | myenergi - http://myenergi.uk/product/zappi/


The guys over at the open energy monitor do a good job. I will try and find a link.

Hopefully I've not taken this off topic.

OpenEVSE EV Charging Station - https://guide.openenergymonitor.org/integrations/openevse/

 

[Gavin A]

there's a bit of misunderstanding in this post, the house will still be connected to the grid, the hybrid inverter simply provides power from the solar panels and batteries when that's available, and charges the batteries with excess power. Any additional power draw comes from the grid directly not via the inverter.

Hope that helps.

Also, most cars have a trickle charge and boost charge function, so if that's the case you want to be running at the trickle charge rate most of the time, usualyl 10 or 13A, to maximise the use of the solar / battery energy.

 

[tlsambo]

We have a 5kW inverter and we were actually allowed to connect 15kW if we had room on the roof. You can increase the size of your array and not affect your FIT too. Do you know who your DNO is?
Also there's a great table to help when choosing battery storage from our installers website here Solar Batteries & Storage: 6 Questions You Need to Ask - https://nakedsolar.co.uk/storage/ might change your mind on your choice of battery.