How to use solar energy to charge your car

One of the fantastic things about electrical vehicles is that, not only can you charge them, or "fill up", in many more places than you can a petrol or diesel car, but you can literally generate your own power to get on the move! If you have solar panels on your property and have your NexBlue Zen connected to them, you can choose how fast you want to charge your vehicle, based on how much you want to use the free energy generated through the solar. We have three settings within the myNexBlue App that you can change when it comes to using your NexBlue Zen, to access them, click the lightening bolt when on your Zen in the app.

Settings

In simple terms, you have three options for charging when NexBlue Zen is connected to your solar, and they work as follows:

• Dynamic load balance - Vehicle will charge at the set speed, regarding off the solar power generated at any one time. Any solar energy generated when the charge point is charging will be used for charging, before any energy from the grid is used.
• Solar surplus only - Vehicle will charge only using solar power, if the generation dips below 6A (minimum an EV can charge at), the vehicle will stop charging until generation increases above 6A again.
• Solar surplus first - Vehicle will change only using solar power, however if the generation dips below 6A then charger will pull energy from the grid to ensure charging doesn't stop, unlike for Solar surplus only in which charging would stop.