Driving on sunshine…
As a Tesla owner, I am impressed by the company’s latest update to the vehicle app, which provides much more information about the vehicle’s battery, allowing you to not only set the charge level and intensity, but also to charge it using surplus domestically generated solar energy.
The option is called “Drive on sunshine”, and provides a feature for those of us who use solar panels and have additional batteries at home: until now, this was only possible manually, and although it was still reasonably convenient as it could be done from the app, it was relatively laborious: in winter, when the self-sufficiency levels of the house are generally below 50%, it is usual to simply program the charge from the time when the off-peak hours begin and charge the battery to the maximum permitted by the domestic installation, which in my case is 25 amperes. But as the days grow longer in spring and summer and I use my heat pump less, self-sufficiency is practically 100%, and it is common to find the battery fully charged during the day. But as said, taking advantage of the surplus instead of simply giving it to the grid has to be done manually, which involves not only controlling the time as well as regulating the charging intensity (if you charge at maximum intensity during the day, when you are using electricity , it is possible to exceed the limit of your installation).
