Synergy between electric vehicles and photovoltaicinstallations in Belgium

Life Cycle Assessments show that electric vehicles are an ecological alternative for conventional vehicles. Despite their ecological advantages, the purchase of a new EV usually results in an extra load for the electrical grid. Therefore it is important to combine the purchase of an EV with an investment in local green energy production. For investments in general, clear financial benefit trumps ecological motivation. Therefore, a Matlab tool was created to calculate the financial synergy of the combination of one or more EVs with a PV installation. The output of this Matlab tool gives the Net Present Value of this PV-EV system and can be used for Flemish private persons and companies. It is shown that there is no financial synergy between PV and EV for private persons. On the Belgian residential market, net metering and a feed-in tariff (FiT) are applicable, so there is no financial incentive to increase self-consumption in Belgium. For companies in Belgium, self-consumption of locally produced PV electricity is currently better than injection into the grid. Many companies give their employees a car for work travel, where electric company cars in Belgium are given a larger tax benefit than ICE company cars, so these EVs can be used to increase the self-consumption financially optimising the use of the PV system. The NPV of the PV-EV system is calculated for the current value of subsidy and no subsidy for the produced electricity. With a subsidy for PV-produced electricity, this results in a lower NPV and a longer payback-time for the electric vehicle. The current subsidy value for the produced energy is a clear motivation for an investment in PV, but may slightly discourage purchasing EVs. However, the synergistic self-consumption effects of PV and EV result in a higher total NPV, better than traditional alternatives.