ELECTRIC VEHICLES OWNERS AND SOLAR ROOFTOPS FIND MUTUAL ATTRACTION

When Jim Selgo moved to his home in Goodyear, Arizona in 2019, he quickly had rooftop solar installed, having had a positive experience with solar at his previous home.

Less than a year later, motivated to take more action to address climate change, he said, Selgo bought his first electric vehicle, a Nissan Leaf. He hasn't paid for electricity or gasoline since.

With solar, "You take advantage of what you're producing at your own house," he said. "Adding an EV just increases your savings and adds to the value of the whole project!" Selgo, a retired public school principal who now drives an electric Volkswagen ID.4 SUV, is just one of many people using solar energy to power their EVs on clean electricity, effectively, on sunshine.

And it also goes the other way.

"It's probably more common today that you have someone who has a solar energy system who is looking at an EV, just because solar has been around longer," said Becca Jones-Albertus, acting deputy assistant secretary for renewable energy at the U.S. Energy Department. "But we know that many EV owners are looking to install solar so that it helps with their increased electricity use and can support more economical charging at home." Of 131 million U.S. households, about 4.5 million have added rooftop solar, as its benefits become more known, according to the DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Office. And 2023 set a record with more than 1 million EVs sold in the U.S.

EVs have to plug in to charge up and run, but electricity from the grid often still comes from burning fossil fuels, negating some of the environmental benefit of going electric. Solar can fix that. It's an important point because electricity production and transportation are the largest two sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore climate change, in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.