Letter to Editor by John Herman’s – Published in the The Advertiser, Bairnsdale, 17/4/24 with some editing. This is the full letter.
Living off grid and charging our Electric Vehicle for many years now, enables me to have a good understanding of the real potential of solar renewable energy.
It needs to be recognized that charging an EV, from your own home solar array is a very doable thing.
But what I have found to be even more astounding is the incredible efficiency transfer of sunlight to EV wheel rotation when you consider commercial solar farms.
Some solar farms have array areas of hundreds of Hectares (Ha), such as that proposed near Bairnsdale in East Gippsland where I live, but if we consider the energy output of just one Ha, that being 100m by 100m, the KW /hrs of power delivered in a period of one year can be determined by a simple calculation.
The kW/hr capacity of any solar array is found by its ground coverage area, the light capture conversion efficiency, the solar constant, and the sunlight hours per year value based on the latitude. So the equation becomes 10,000 (sq.m) x 0.60 (panel coverage area), x 0.22 (% panel efficiency), x 1.34 (latitude conversion value for one year) = Megawatt hours per year.
The one Ha solar array at the latitude of Bairnsdale value being 1,770 MW/hrs per annum. Or 1,770,000 kW/hrs per annum.
But now to see just how far that much electrical energy will drive an EV from that one years worth of energy capture is fairly simple.
Our current 2019 fully battery electric Kona uses on average 0.148 kWhrs of energy for every 1km of distance travelled.
So by dividing the 0.148 (kW/hrs) into the kW/hr output of a one Ha array we get a figure that gives the distance travelled by the EV for a year of energy collection.
1,770,000/ 0.148 = 12,000,000km, the total distance travelled by one EV from that tiny section of a solar farm.
The average annual distance driven in Australia is about 12,000km, so the one Hectare solar array would power 1000 EVs
for one year, or rather, continuously, as long as the PV array power was being exported to the grid.
If internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, were used to travel this same distance, then the volume used would be 840,000 litres, at an average usage rate of 7L/100km.
So in fact the proposed 175 Ha solar farm, near Bairnsdale, would be capable of off setting over 147,000,000 Litres of petroleum fossil fuel, each and every year it is sitting there soaking up sun power and feeding it into the local grid.
The future is looking good, and I’m so pleased to be able to take part in this renewable energy revolution.
Pollution free, quiet, powerful, low maintenance and enabling home refuelling at close to zero cost.
It can’t happen fast enough!
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