Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 18:15:46 -0800
From: Jeff Chan
To: rav4-ev list at e-farm.com
Subject: Photovoltaic (Solar) charging poll results


Hi All,
I've tabulated the emailed and Yahoo Groups votes as of 11/18/03
in the poll:

       "Do you use alternate energy or grid
        power (SCE, PGE, etc.) to charge your
        EV?  Alternate energy includes solar,
        wind, water, steam, etc.  Grid power
        means a public utility electric company.

        Please choose the most appropriate
        category."

The results are:

1. Yes, I charge my EV from solar power at home.

        14 from Yahoo, plus 19 by email is 33 votes for solar

2. I charge from other non-grid alternate energy (wind, water,
   etc.).

         0 votes from either source

3. I don't have solar or other non-grid power, but am considering
   it.

        10 votes on Yahoo, plus 13 by email, less 2 for duplicate
        votes from me and the Josephsons is 21 votes for charge
        from grid, but considereing solar.  (I had to vote again
        in order to be able to see the poll results after changing
        my email address.)

4. I charge my EV at home from the public utility grid only, and
   am not considering adding alternate energy sources at home.

        2 votes from Yahoo, plus 5 by email is 7

So the results are divided roughly evenly between respondents who
charge from solar at 33 and the grid at 28.

Caveats and Comments:

This is not a scientific poll, nor is it necessarily a
representative sampling of the folks on the rav4-ev@e-farm.com
or old Yahoo Groups rav4_ev list.  It represents folks who
chose to respond.  Given that there are more than a hundred
people on each list, clearly not everyone responded.  In fact,
a majority did not.

I do not necessarily have full visibility on multiple
voting between the Yahoo Groups poll and emailed responses
other than the two cases disclosed above.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the fraction of EV
households using Photovoltaics is more likely a quarter
or less rather than one half.

That said, I commend the folks using Photovoltaics to
charge their EVs, and I am personally glad that they do.
This is an elegant, clean and generally great way to retain
our mobility without polluting directly, significantly
consuming non-renewable resources, contributing to the
national trade deficit through foreign oil purchases,
or enriching less-than-scrupulous oil or energy suppliers.

Other interesting observations:

1.  A large majority of folks who currently charge their EVs
from the grid are considering using PhotoVoltaics.  In this
way EV usage may be seen as a path to PV ownership.  There
seems to be a good potential market for PV systems to EV users.

2.  The opposite also seems true.  Several commented that they
only found out about EVs after investigating PVs.  Some EV
users had existing PV systems before they got EVs, so there's
a path from PVs to EVs also.  Surely one could and probably
should market EVs to PV system owners.

3.  Some cannot use PV because their roofs are not oriented
favorably or covenants and other homeowner or apartment
contract restrictions discourage or disallow it.

4.  In some locations, the electric rates are so low that
payback for PV systems would take a very long time, making
the systems arguably uneconomical.  Some people ignore the
lack of economic incentive and install PV anyway, presumably
for reasons more philosophic than economic.  Some don't.

5.  One person doesn't even charge at home, relying on
Santa Monica's public PV charging station for 90% of their
needs and other non-PV public chargers for the rest.

6.  Another person reported significant problems with the
ethics of their PV contractor.  Caveat emptor.

Thanks to everyone who responded.  I found the results interesting
and hope others do also.

Please feel free to share these results, but please include the
caveats and comments above and also a reference to the source
of this poll.  Probably the best way to do all that is to copy
this whole message intact.  I assume this could be of interest
to other EV and alternate energy groups.

I'm putting up this message on my web site as:

  http://www.jeffchan.com/cars/ev/ev-pv-vote.txt

Cheers,

Jeff C.
-- 
Jeff Chan
mailto:rav4-ev@jeffchan.com
http://www.jeffchan.com/
 ****************************************************
***    Battery Electric Vehicles are four times    ***
*** more energy efficient than Fuel Cell Vehicles. ***
 ****************************************************