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com

ScienceDirect
Solar Energy 125 (2016) 219–226
www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Analysis of energy capture by vehicle solar roofs in conjunction

with workplace plug-in charging
Dunbar P. Birnie III
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8065, United States

Received 12 August 2015; received in revised form 17 November 2015; accepted 3 December 2015
Available online 5 January 2016

Communicated by: Associate Editor Elias Stefanakos

Abstract

Solar cells integrated into electric vehicles have long been a mainstay of collegiate racing competitions, but the small amount of roof
area has prevented vehicle-solar installations from having a dramatic market in more conventional vehicles. Still, vehicle solar roof instal-
lations have a great potential because they can almost always be exposed to the sunlight as they are frequently parked for hours in park-
ing lots at work, shopping, or other open spaces. At the same time hybrid and electric vehicle drivers are typically concerned about their
all-electric driving range and do whatever they can to plug-in and ‘‘top off” the battery whenever possible. Unfortunately this behavior
mode of topping off the battery can establish situations where the vehicle’s solar collection is neutralized because the battery is already
full. This paper analyzes this conflict for different charging and driving scenarios with an emphasis on commuters who would have access
to workplace charging. It is found that regular commuters who make use of level-2 workplace charging could experience a loss of more
than 75% of the potentially available photovoltaic output from roof-installed solar on their vehicles. This surprise finding is discussed
from the perspective of plug usage habits and ‘‘range anxiety”.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Solar-on-vehicles; Plug-in electric vehicle charging; Solar array energy maximization; Green commuter transit

1. Introduction of PV array output as a function of all the critical param-

Much is known about the use of photovoltaic (PV)
arrays for generating electrical power. Semiconductor
devices, usually silicon-based, are excited by certain wave-
lengths of light and the output power scales roughly lin-
early with the intensity of light shining on the panels.
Peak power point trackers are able to adjust the operating
voltage of the PV devices to achieve a maximum output
with respect to the available sunlight irradiation (Esram
and Chapman, 2007; Koutroulis et al., 2001). Based on
these peak output rates, the US Department of Energy
(DOE) has provided web-based tools to allow projections
E-mail address: dunbar.birnie@rutgers.edu
eters including geographic location, installation tilt, track-
ing ability and other parameters giving monthly or annual
output projections (Marion et al., 2001). Most users are
interested in annual averages, which are then related to pre-
dictions of pay-back periods based on the electricity value
compared to array installation cost. This average analysis
is based on the utilization of grid-connected solar arrays
that are always able to collect the sunlight that is available
and even feed it back to the grid when local usage is lower
than the power that is being generated, meaning that none
of the available sunlight is wasted; grid-connect PV arrays
are typically always ‘‘on”. Connecting this green source of
electricity with plug-in vehicles is an obvious next step that
can provide transportation with nearly zero green-house

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2015.12.014
0038-092X/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
220 D.P. Birnie III / Solar Energy 125 (2016) 219–226
gas (GHG) impact. Significant work has already been
directed at matching PV generated power with electric
vehicles (EV), though typically the PV is not directly
installed on the vehicles in question (Birnie, 2009; De
Schepper et al., 2015; Denholm et al., 2013; Benela and
Jamuna, 2013; Chen et al., 2014; Chukwu and Mahajan,
2014; Liu et al., 2015; Pantos, 2011; Saber and
Venayagamoorthy, 2011; Shi et al., 2012; Tarroja et al.,
2014; Traube et al., 2013; Tulpule et al., 2013; van der
Kam and van Sark, 2015; Zhang et al., 2012; Zhang
et al., 2015; Redpath et al., 2011), though the energy value
is maintained.
A vehicle-roof-installed solar array, however, is not grid-
tied and will only be operational in situations where the
vehicle’s battery has room to accept the energy being col-
lected by the array. Thus, the driving and plug-in habits of
the vehicle user can significantly influence the solar energy
capture1. And, for commuters driving to and from work
on a regular basis, the particular times of departure and arri-
val will influence the battery state-of-charge (SOC) and will
thus influence the net yield of energy for that vehicle/solar
installation. A few studies have examined solar charging
of vehicle batteries including the natural rise in battery volt-
age as the SOC changes, depending on the battery chem-
istry, solar array size, and peak-power point tracking
method(Gibson and Kelly, 2010; Kelly and Gibson, 2011;
Kelly, 2012; Nguyen et al., 2013). But, so far there has not
been analysis of the impact of the ‘‘full battery” condition
on the solar energy yield for such systems.
To compound matters further, the seasonal variability
of dawn and dusk times can also be important in relation
to the particular driving habits for any specific commuter.
To compare these effects we have accessed the more
detailed information that can be found in the DOE’s Typ-
ical Meteorological Year database (TMY3) Wilcox and
Marion, 2008. These data are required for the present anal-
ysis because we consider how hour-by-hour sunlight
brightness and length-of-day variations will define limits
on the available sunlight and thus influence the ability of
a vehicle solar array to provide energy for propulsion.
To illustrate the dramatic range of daily and seasonal
sunlight variations, Fig. 1 gives the daily integrated sun-
light exposure throughout a full year for Newark, New Jer-
sey, as an example location2. In this case the ‘‘global
1
The topic of driving and plug-in habits is known to include aspects of
parking location choice that might influence the solar exposure. For
example regular vehicle drivers typically prefer garage or shaded locations
to reduce weathering of paint and vehicle interior. The present analysis is
built on the assumption that drivers of the PV-enabled vehicles would
choose to modify their parking habits to find more open locations when
possible. This will be further complicated by the locations where EV plug-
in infrastructure may have been installed and whether they might be
shaded. Thus, the present analysis has to be considered a ‘‘best-case”
where full exposure during driving and parking can be reasonably
maintained.
2
The integration has been performed using the TMY3 hourly irradiance
intensities and assuming PV module output scales linearly with intensity.
Fig. 1. Daily integrated sunlight irradiation throughout the year based on
data from NREL’s Typical Meteorological Year Database for Newark,
New Jersey.
horizontal irradiance” (GHI) was used as the best represen-
tation because a solar panel on a vehicle would likely be
nearly level with the ground (knowing that the vehicle
would need to drive in all directions). The large swing from
winter to summer is quite obvious and well understood.
The large day-to-day variability is due to clouds and
storms that sometimes cut down on the sunlight brightness,
but perhaps only for a short time. Every geographic loca-
tion has its own variability characteristics.
Given this sunlight availability, it is relatively easy to
estimate the additional electric driving range that a hybrid
or electric vehicle might achieve if this sunlight were to be
efficiently converted to electricity. The global annual
average insolation for the NJ location is just below
4 kW h/m2/day. But since the standard testing condition
(STC) for solar modules makes use of solar-spectrum-
equivalent light having 1 kW/m2 brightness this then inte-
grates to an effective 4 h of DC output scaled to the
array’s ‘‘name-plate rating” during an average day. This
gets down-rated based on slight inefficiency for inverters
and other factors that might still allow 85–95% of this
energy being delivered as AC output to the grid
(or converted to the DC voltage-of-choice for the vehicle’s
battery/power system).
Now, again considering a vehicle-roof solar installation
it must be understood that the possible area covered by
solar panels is realistically quite small. Though collegiate
racing teams design their vehicles to increase the array size
(providing between 1000 and 2000 Watts-peak, Wp, output
(Suarez-Castaneda et al., 2014; Sullivan and Powers, 1993),
mainstream production vehicles have much smaller roofs
and proportionately lower solar collection potential
(Giannouli and Yianoulis, 2012). For example the recent
Ford roof-installed-solar concept car (the ‘‘C-Max Solar
Energy Hybrid”) has around 300–350 Wp output from an
array covering only about 1.6 square meters of roof
(Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept Car, 2014). Other pro-
totype and experimental vehicles with solar roofs have
delivered lower peak powers: two variants with 215 Wp
 D.P. Birnie III / Solar Energy 125 (2016) 219–226
on Toyota Priuses (Fairley, 2008; Bruninga, 2010), another
Prius with 270 Wp (Richard, 2005), and a Toyota High-
lander with a 215 Wp array (Bogue, 2012). Therefore, for
the present modeling we assume a roof-mounted array hav-
ing a rating of 300 Wp and we assume a 90% efficiency for
the inverter/battery-interface3.
At an annual average level it is interesting to know what
additional driving range would be provided by this array.
Using the average insolation cited above (4 kW
h/m2/day), a 300 Wp array with an inverter providing
90% efficiency we arrive at 1.08 kW h average energy yield
per day (for the example Newark location). The driving
range that this would provide will ultimately depend on
the size of the vehicle in question, but data logged at Rut-
gers for a 2012 production year Chevy Volt have shown an
annual average of 3.77 miles per kW h from the battery
(Birnie, 2013). Thus, for that vehicle, the average annual
energy yield would provide just over 4 miles of additional
range per day(Fairley, 2008). Considering a nominal
12,000 mile annual total usage then this would constitute
a bit more than 12% of the annual vehicle miles integrating
over a year of use. This emphasizes that solar on vehicle
roofs must be considered a supplement to the normal
charging from the grid and not the main energy source,
which is the reason we examine the competition that these
energy sources encounter when using the same vehicle bat-
tery as the sole mode of storage from either grid or solar
energy supplies.
The power level produced by the solar array also pales
in comparison to the power used during normal driving.
For example, a one-way commute by the author of about
18 miles might take about 45 min under favorable traffic
congestion conditions and consume over 4.5 kW h of
energy, thus extracting power from the battery at an aver-
age rate of about 6 kW, much more than the solar array
would provide even at noontime on the brightest day (pro-
viding a maximum of only 300 W). This means that as
soon as any driving commences all of the solar-generated
power will easily participate in the driving needs, but the
battery will still be the primary power source.
2. Analysis
The introduction illustrates that vehicle-installed solar
will provide rather modest amounts of energy on a daily
basis, but still provides useful energy value and would
reduce the grid-charging costs and also reduce the carbon
footprint for the vehicle when driving. Now, as mentioned
above, when combining the solar-on-vehicle charging with
a driver’s normal plug-in habits there could be significant
3
The 90% value may be slightly optimistic and is representative of high-
end electronics performance, though any particular system’s value will
certainly vary. PVWATTS (Marion et al., 2001) suggests a default PV
array output efficiency at 86% and an inverter efficiency of 96%, though
since we integrate sunlight that is frequently at lower-than-maximum
irradiance level this value might be optimistic.
221
interference caused by situations where the battery would
already have been filled using grid electricity. This compe-
tition is illustrated graphically in Fig. 2, which simulates a
commuter who has access to work-place plug-in charging
but also charges their vehicle at home at nighttime. The
sunlight intensity (GHI) is plotted as a function of time
for a model bright summer day. Different time spans are
shaded green or red to highlight times when the solar elec-
tricity can or cannot be captured based on the battery
SOC, respectively. So for the early morning (up to time
A) the car is parked and the battery is full, having been
filled during the night before, and therefore the morning
sunlight is not captured, up until the point when the driver
starts their commute (time A). Then, during the full dura-
tion of the commute the power use by the vehicle is larger
than the power generated so all the solar power is collected
effectively and reduces the additional drain from the bat-
tery to provide the driving need (from time A to time B).
Upon reaching work the driver plugs in and for some time
afterward the battery will be receiving grid power and solar
power will also be collected (from time B to time C). Time
C indicates the point when the battery reaches 100% capac-
ity and no more grid or solar power will be received; the
solar array becomes deactivated at this point. Only when
the driver leaves work for the evening commute does the
solar array become operational again. When the driver
reaches home they may plug in right away, but the battery
will have capacity to accept solar for all the time required
to fill the battery again, until sundown when only grid
power will be available.
Many factors will influence the amount of solar energy
that is collected in this battery-limited competition. For
example, plug-in equipment in the United States is now
most frequently provided at ‘‘Level 2” (@240 V AC), and
are preferred by users over standard ‘‘Level 1” outlets
(@120 V AC) because they fill the battery faster and ensure
Fig. 2. Competition for available battery space between roof-top solar
and plug-in charging. Green shaded time spans allow full use of solar-
generated electricity. Red shaded time spans have full-battery status and
thus prevent solar energy collection. A: time of departure from home with
a full battery; B: arrival at work and commence plug-in; C: time when
battery is filled; D: time of departure to return home. (For interpretation
of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the
web version of this article.)
222 D.P. Birnie III / Solar Energy 125 (2016) 219–226
the maximum all-electric range quickly. But in the present
context a Level 1 charge that takes longer will expand the
timespan of effective solar collection (time A to time C in
Fig. 2) while reducing the duration of deactivation (from
time C to time D).
Fig. 2 was drawn for a model sunny day, but when we
consider the variability of the sunlight represented in
Fig. 1 and the seasonal variations in sun-up and sun-
down, we can map out the seasonal effects in relation to
the charging patterns used by commuters who have roof-
installed solar vehicles. In particular, as an example, we
examine three charging protocols or habits that users might
adopt, depending on their access to either home or work-
place charging:
1. Plug-in at home only: this is modeled here as occurring at
nighttime and either Level 1 or Level 2 is assumed to fill
the battery before dawn. The solar lost here is only dur-
ing the period from dawn up to the beginning of the
morning commute.
2. Plug-in at home and at work: this was described as noted
before and shown in Fig. 2. The workplace Level 1 and
Level 2 cases are examined as variants.
3. Plug-in at work only: this means that the vehicle’s bat-
tery will not be full in the morning so the dawn-to-
departure sunlight can still be captured. On the other
hand the battery state of charge when arriving at work
(time B) will be much lower because the full round-
trip of commuting will have been driven, so the active
charging time will be twice as long (time B to time C)
allowing more timespan of sunlight capture.
NREL’s TMY3 database has been used to provide real-
istic sunlight intensity values and evaluate solar energy
availability on an hour-by-hour basis as input for compar-
ing the effects of charging habits by commuters as noted
above. A nominal one-way commuting distance of 15 miles
was selected as the basis for the comparison, which covers a
majority of daily commuters coming to the author’s cam-
pus location (Birnie, 2015). Average commuting speed
and energy usage during rush-hour travel times were based
on historical commuting data accumulated while driving a
2012 model year Chevy Volt (Birnie, 2013). Commuting
departure time from home was aligned to aim for a 9AM
arrival at work; departure from work was set at 6PM.
Table 1 contains graphs illustrating the impact on potential
solar energy collection for the charging habits outlined
above. Large differences are observed in the effectiveness
of the solar energy collection when operating with different
plug-in habits. The next section discusses these findings.
3. Discussion
The present work has examined the competition
between grid sourced charging and vehicle-roof-installed
solar panels to augment the electric and hybrid vehicle
propulsion. The context for this competition is a growing
base of workplace installed solar, often as parking lot
canopy solar arrays (Birnie, 2009), joined to an ever
increasing number of workplaces that offer their employees
and visitors the chance to plug in (and which is being
championed by the US DOE in their ‘‘Workplace Charging
Challenge” (EV Everywhere Workplace Charging
Challenge, 2015). This is the foundation for even more
ambitious goals for integrating vehicles with the ‘‘smart
grid” to stabilize electricity delivery and keep energy prices
low (Denholm et al., 2013; Tulpule et al., 2013). One
opportunity in this direction is to have vehicles both receive
and deliver power to the grid, a mode known as Vehicle-to-
Grid (‘‘V2G”) Tomic and Kempton, 2007; Kempton and
Tomic, 2005a,b; Kempton and Letendre, 1997; Ehsani
et al., 2012. This discussion section examines many facets
of the strategies for vehicle charging with the specific
emphasis on vehicles that would have solar arrays on their
roofs and thus compete for the vehicle’s battery capacity
for useful solar energy capture, as modeled above.
As shown in Table 1, commuters who charge their vehi-
cle only at home (Mode 1) will typically retain a significant
majority of the available sunlight no matter what the sea-
son. For this charging mode, the only energy lost is due
to the early morning hours before the commuter leaves
home, which is a rather small fraction of any day’s total.
However, when commuters charge at work and at home
(Mode 2) they end up having substantially greater amount
of the day where the battery is full preventing solar energy
capture during those times. Level 2 charging is much more
problematic in this regard because it fills the battery up fas-
ter and thus brings the solar charging to a stop earlier in
the day thus capturing less of the available sunlight (losing
more than 75% on an annual basis). Finally, if commuters
operate intentionally to maximize their usage of the avail-
able workplace charging (Mode 3) we find that Level 1
charging has quite small solar loss, while Level 2 charging
still suffers quite a large fraction of solar energy loss (about
50% lost). Essentially a commuter who charges at work but
not at home will require twice as much energy during the
workday charge session, which will naturally take twice
as long; the solar energy collection for this mode would
then remain active for that longer time of grid charging.
So, as a general observation: slower charging is better since
it dictates a longer time span when there would still be
available battery capacity for the solar-generated energy
to be stored. Still, one needs to recognize that EV and
plug-in hybrid drivers usually prefer the faster charging
rate to ensure a larger all-electric range, so the desire to
maximize solar capture is at odds with the desire to maxi-
mize all-electric driving range (Neubauer and Wood, 2014).
Many of the figures in Table 1 have a pronounced sea-
sonal variation where a greater fraction of the available
sunlight is lost in the summer season than the winter. This
can be generally understood on the basis of an earlier
summer-time sunrise in comparison to the time a driver
start’s their commute (assumed to be constant throughout
the seasons in the modeling above). When considering the
 D.P. Birnie III / Solar Energy 125 (2016) 219–226 223

Table 1
Graphs of impacts on daily solar energy collection caused by the various plug-in user habits. Each graph shows the fraction of that day’s available solar
energy that was lost because it arrived at a time when the battery was already full.
Mode 1: Home Only

At-home Charging Only

Mode 2: Home and Work

Workplace with Level 1 Charging Workplace with Level 2 Charging

Mode 3: Work Only

Workplace with Level 1 Charging Workplace with Level 2 Charging

annual sum, though, this is a greater problem because the
sunlight brightness is higher during the summer as well.
The availability of battery capacity to accept the solar
power during the day is significantly influenced by the typ-
ical commute distance, too. Shorter commutes necessitate
the use of proportionately less energy, which means that
the battery will fill up proportionately sooner and result
in a smaller solar yield. Conversely commuters who travel
farther will require a longer time for plug-in charging and
will reap a larger fraction of the available solar.
Commuter behavior in this analysis is aimed at the typi-
cal work-day cycle. Vehicle use on weekends could be smal-
ler or greater than what might be typical for workday
commuting. But again, the qualitative effects are the same.
More vehicle use will mean more time elapsing when the bat-
tery would not be full and would be able to accept the solar
charging. On the other hand, if the car remains parked in a
full-battery status, the available solar cannot be captured
even when there might be lots of sunlight available.
The data here were calculated for the NREL TMY3
dataset for Newark, New Jersey. This is a location with
somewhat moderate/average sunlight brightness, but we
expect similar performance for other locations whether
generally brighter or generally more overcast because the
rate of grid charging is much larger than would come from
most roof-installed solar arrays, even for very sunny cli-
mates (because roof-top arrays are so small). The graphs
in Table 1 are ratios of the available sunlight based on
cut-off times defined by the commuting distance and charg-
ing needs.
It is interesting to place the solar-vehicle charging modes
into the context of future V2G systems. These V2G systems
are systems that can support bi-directional power flow
between the car and the grid. So adding a trickle charge
from a vehicle-mounted solar array is likely felt as only a
small perturbation to the general V2G operation. The
V2G scenario operates best when users are connected both
at home and at work, with the optimum case found when a
224 D.P. Birnie III / Solar Energy 125 (2016) 219–226
vehicle is always plugged in so that the smart grid usage of
the vehicle’s battery can be maximized (Tomic and
Kempton, 2007; Kempton and Tomic, 2005a,b). And, in
the context of bidirectional power and energy delivery,
the higher power connections would also be preferred
(Level 2 favored over Level 1). Thus, ultimately at the
workplace one would desire one-to-one pairing of regular
users and plug-in parking spots with relatively continuous
occupancy and little sharing. This is at odds with more
basic plug-in business models that would encourage multi-
ple daily plug-in users/events with modest supply sur-
charges to recoup the hardware and maintenance costs
for having the charging equipment to begin with.
The V2G operation is likely to result in slower average
charging rates and thus preserve battery SOC for a greater
duration of the daylight enabling a greater fraction of daily
sunlight to be captured by a vehicle-installed solar array.
And, it is easy to imagine the continued plug-in connection
to feed any overflow solar back to the grid (hopefully run-
ning the meter backwards), again retaining the ability to
capture the majority of the day’s sunlight. Still, there has
been reluctance to adopt V2G from the standpoint of bat-
tery longevity (Bashash et al., 2011; Bishop et al., 2013;
Han and Han, 2013; Han et al., 2014; Zhou et al., 2011).
One simplified version of V2G operates in only one
direction, but controls the rate of charging in response to
grid signals. This ‘‘smart charging” scenario is sometimes
called ‘‘V1G” as a kind of precursor to V2G (Hollister,
2013; Sortomme and El-Sharkawi, 2011). As noted above
for V2G, the V1G implies a longer duration of plug-in with
possible slower charging, so by the same reasoning there is
less conflict for battery capacity with vehicle-installed solar
arrays and less sunlight loss.
Certainly, there might be other ways for vehicle-based
solar power generation could be used. For example the
solar roofs now commercially available for the Prius and
Leaf models are used to power environmental controls
for the cabin volume even while parked (Toyota Prius,
2015). While this energy isn’t used directly for adding driv-
ing range, it has the side benefit of reducing the energy
required for air conditioning when a driver begins a jour-
ney, which does preserve some of that battery charge for
additional driving distance (Yan et al., 2012). Even reflec-
tive, non-solar, roofs can provide this benefit to some
degree (Levinson et al., 2011).
Finally, the conflict between the solar generated energy
and the grid-sourced energy with limited battery capacity
is one that might be managed with some kind of smart
charging system that could take into account the dual
inputs and optimize the solar collection with only small
impact to the final range at the point a driver returns to
their vehicle at the end of their workday. This method
could have varying levels of complexity depending on what
forecasting data might be available for the driver’s depar-
ture time or weather patterns and the like. It would also
need to account for a vehicle’s possible participation in
the other aspects of smart-grid interaction (such as V2G,
as noted above). Using electricity price incentives or better
promulgation of GHG impact information to the public
could also be important for adjusting charging habits
(Axsen et al., 2011; Davis and Bradley, 2012). Evaluating
the impact of these smart charging methods on the effective
solar-yield of vehicle-roof-installed solar is beyond the
scope of the present analysis.
4. Conclusions
The present work has examined the competition for
battery capacity when charging a vehicle from dual inputs:
(1) a vehicle-roof-integrated solar array and (2) a work-
place plug-in connection. Under simple commuting transit
habits it is found that workplace plug-in creates regular sit-
uations where significant fractions of the daily insolation
will be lost because the plug-in operation fills the vehicle
battery quite early in the day. This effect is worst for a
usage pattern where the driver charges both at home and
work, and when they use Level 2 charging at work instead
of Level 1. In this case nearly 80% of the available sunlight
energy is prevented from being captured by the system. The
best case was found for drivers who plugged in only at
home and don’t avail themselves of workplace charging
for their vehicles.
Acknowledgements
Support from the Corning/Saint-Gobain/Malcolm
G. McLaren Endowment at Rutgers University is grate-
fully acknowledged. Vehicle testing on campus has been
sponsored by the Rutgers EcoComplex and the Rutgers
Energy Institute.
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