this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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Yesterday night we charged our car for the equivalent of 6 cent per kWh.
2 days earlier we charged for free using surplus power from our solar panels.
On average in the winter we can charge during the night for around 15 cent per kWh. from April to September (both months included) we can pretty consistently charge for free from our solar panels in Copenhagen at Latitude 55° North.
If you live further south, you will be able to do even better. All of USA except Alaska has way better conditions for solar power than we do.
$0.40 per kWh here :-/
We also have that in the morning when everybody get up, and then again around dinner time. Prices often even go slightly higher than that in those periods.
Our rates are hourly, so charging the car at night you can generally get power for 15 cent per kWh.
6 cent is very cheap and does not generally occur during winter, but I bet that very soon when the spring gets milder, we will see below 10 cent regularly.
For us solar with battery is brilliant, because even when there is little to no sun at dinner, we have enough on the battery to cover both the expensive periods 6 moths of the year. Most days even when cloudy, we can still make enough to cover the entire 24 hours.
And the solar system only cost $30k!
Ours is 11 kWh with a 7kWh battery, complete with installation it was $18 k, but that includes 25% sales tax.
So without tax it's $14.5 k.
But that was 2½ years ago, and although that is not so long ago, prices have dropped dramatically here because prices were inflated due to the energy crisis caused by Russia invading Ukraine, and Russia blocking gas deliveries to Europe.
But to be fair, we didn't buy the entire solar system, just a few solar panels. 😋
Our solar panels cut our roughly $500/month electric bill to zero when you average it out over an entire year. So that’s $6000 a year. During peak summer our batteries that get charged by the panels send excess electricity back to to the grid that the utility pays a premium for, and last year we got $2500 for that. Our state also pays us for the total amount of renewable energy we generate, and we got about $500 last year for that. So in one year our panels saved us roughly $9000. After we’ve paid off our loan in a couple more years then this will continue generating free money for us.
Whoa $500 per month! Our consumption here in Denmark has been stable around $150 per month for 20 years in 3 different houses. Excluding heating. Prices have gone up, but constantly more energy efficient equipment has curbed that, so we use less electricity now than we did 20 years ago.
I'm guessing you live somewhere that needs air condition?
After we bought solar panels I calculated it for 2024 and we paid $8 when deducting sales from our purchases. But we have 4 Winter months where we can't cover our consumption with the panels alone, because the sun is too low on the sky to give much energy.
Our system is 11 kWh panels, and 7 kWh battery, I am curious how big your system is?
We have about 40kwh panels and 40kwh battery. We use roughly 1mwh per month, with our biggest consumption between our EV, kitchen appliances, and clothes dryer.
Maybe,maybe less ,but the point is that it will pay for itself.