I have an EV and would love to use solar panels but my roof orientation at the front of my house doesn’t allow me to put up standard panels to benefit from morning sunshine while the back of the house does. What can I do in this instance? I’ve been told it’s not worth putting one or two panels at the front. Is there alternative options like solar tiles? - Brendan S, Co Galway
This is a question probably best put to an expert in solar panel installation, but we’ll try our best to help.
In a simplistic sense, if one side of your roof isn’t facing quite the right way, then one of the other sides should be, but of course that really is simplistic and it doesn’t take into account the shape and size of each section of roof, or the potential for shade from nearby trees or other buildings.
Having lived in Galway for five years myself, I’m tempted to say that getting mould on the panels might be more of a problem, but my tongue is very much in my cheek there, and actually even in grey and wet Ireland, we still get plenty of solar-useful light, although obviously that tails off in the winter months.
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You could potentially go for a ground-mounted solar array, and in theory as long as you don’t exceed 25-metres square then you don’t need to apply for planning permission. However, I’d be very careful about doing my homework on how visible a set of ground-mounted panels might be, and if any glare and reflection from the panels might affect neighbouring buildings.
Solar roof tiles are most definitely an option, but an expensive one. They can cost as much as twice the price of conventional solar panels for an equivalent power output, so you could be looking at spending as much as €20,000, or maybe even more, and you’d have the added hassle of having to actually remove and replace roof tiles rather than just adding on solar panels. Still, it’s an option.
Whatever solution you come up with, running an EV using solar energy is a brilliant idea. It can bring the “carbon debt” of a newly-built electric car down from tens of thousands of kilometres to just a few thousand, because you’re running it on “fuel” that has never seen the inside of a power station (even if the solar cells themselves still have to be made in a factory, transported, fitted etc).
Better still, there’s the potential for reducing your running costs to absolutely nothing, and the best way to do that is to not charge your EV up from solar at all. How?
Well, it goes a bit like this. If you have solar panels generating electricity on your roof, the chances are that you’re going to be out — working —at times when electricity generation is at its best — midday.
That’s okay though, because many electricity providers offer the option of allowing you to sell excess solar energy generated from your panels back to the grid, and depending on your provider and your tariff, that price might well be more valuable than the cost of cheap night-rate electricity.
[ Why are there no solutions for EV drivers without driveways?Opens in new window ]
So, the theory goes, don’t charge your EV from solar power during the day, but instead sell every kWh you generate back to the grid. You probably won’t make a massive profit or anything but in Budget 2026, the first €400 you make from such electricity generation is free, as far as income tax is concerned. So that’s €400 of effectively free money — net of your solar panels paying you back the cost of their installation in energy savings, which most experts reckon takes about five years on average.
Conveniently, that €400 is pretty much the cost we estimate of charging a family-sized EV with a useable 400km range to cover the average annual Irish mileage of 16,000km, assuming you’re on a reasonably cheap night rate.
So, sell your solar power during the day, buy back cheap night-rate electricity for your electric car, and your fuel costs drop from about €1,600 per annum for a VW Golf-sized hatchback to zero, and potentially less than zero if you’re selling lots of power back to the grid, by having an EV and solar panels.
This isn’t just for the few, either, but for the many. In fact a recent chat with Nissan engineers, at the launch of the new Leaf electric car, revealed that Nissan is planning a whole “EV ecosystem” that includes solar panels and storage batteries using repurposed cells from old Leafs. The ambition, says Nissan, is that “anyone who buys a Leaf could eventually run it for free”.
Irish car buyers tend to be a touch traditionalist, and have been somewhat reluctant so far to fully embrace the electric revolution but I can’t help but feel that if more people knew you could reduce your fuel costs to absolute zero, while also benefitting the environment, there’d be unruly queues outside every EV dealer in Ireland.
