Madison Wisconsin Gets Solar Chargers for City’s EV Fleet, But …..

Apparently, Madison, the capital of Wisconsin has installed its first solar EV charger to provide power for part of the city’s fleet of vehicles.  The fellow in this video says that it can even charge two EVs at once.

But wait a second.  The charger has three standard commercial solar panels,  77″ X 39″.   That’s 3*(77*39)/(39.36^2), converting to meters, gives us 5.8 m^2.  The insolation of Madison is ~3 KWhrs/day, giving you 17.4 KWhrs/day.  At 25% efficiency, that’s 4.35 KWhrs/day.

A Chevy Volt has a 66 KWhr battery-pack, so charging one such EV would take 15.2 days.  (Charging two: 30.4 days.)  Not sure how workable this is.

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