Solar charging
Charging your EV from your own rooftop solar in Canberra.
Yes, certain smart chargers can divert surplus rooftop solar into your car instead of exporting it, and Capital Charge Co. installs them across Canberra and the ACT. How much of your driving that covers depends on the size of your array, how much you drive, and how much of your charging happens in daylight.
The honest limit is a floor. The EV charging standard sets a minimum charging current of 6 A, so below roughly 1.4 kW of surplus on a single-phase supply the car either pauses or draws the difference from the grid.
What does a charger need in order to follow your solar?
Metering at the switchboard, and a charger built to act on it. SolarQuotes describes the mechanism plainly: smart solar chargers “use a current transformer (CT) in the switchboard, which detects when your solar system is about to export to the grid – the charger can then divert that power into your car instead”.
- We fit sensing at the switchboard. One or more CT clamps read the current flowing to and from the grid and feed that reading back to the charger.
- The charger tracks the surplus. myenergi describes its zappi in eco mode as one that “continually tells the car how much power it can use to keep export (and import) as close to zero as possible”.
- A solar-only mode waits for sun. On the same unit, “ECO+ mode goes better than ECO and will stop the charge if you don’t have enough surplus generation”, and the display reads “Waiting for Surplus” until there is enough.
- A boost or fast mode overrides it. Every unit in the table below also has a straight full-rate mode for the nights you need the car full by morning.
Ocular sets the same idea out as three named modes on its IQ Home Solar: Fast, Solar Assist, which draws a minimum 6 A from the grid plus whatever solar is spare, and Solar Only, which needs at least 7 A of excess before it will run.
Source: SolarQuotes, “EV charging guide”, updated 25 August 2026; myenergi Help Centre, “What are the zappi charging modes?”, no date shown; Ocular Charging, “Ocular IQ Home”, no date shown. Checked 18 September 2026.
How much surplus does the car actually need?
The EV charging standard sets a minimum charging current of 6 A. On a single-phase supply that is about 1.4 kW of surplus before the car will take a charge at all. On three phases the standard requires 6 A per phase, so the floor rises to about 4.2 kW.
myenergi states it directly: “According to the EV charging standard, the minimum charging current is 6A (which is ~1.4kW for a single phase EV charge) so if you have less than 1.4kW of surplus generation the extra power has to be taken from the mains.” That is why a solar-only mode pauses rather than trickling.
Most solar-aware chargers let you soften the floor. On the zappi, the minimum green level setting decides how much grid power may be used to top the surplus up: “with MGL at 50% zappi will keep charging the EV until the surplus generation drops below 700W”. Getting that setting right for your roof and your driving matters more than the badge on the front of the unit.
Source: myenergi Help Centre, “What are the zappi charging modes?”, no date shown. Checked 18 September 2026.
What can a Canberra rooftop put into a car, summer and winter?
Enough for ordinary days, much less in winter. The ACT Government puts the average Canberra driver at “about 38 kilometres each day”, and the Electric Vehicle Council works on “about 17kWh of electricity” per 100 km. Multiply those two published figures and an average Canberra day is a bit under 7 kWh, arithmetic from two sources, not a published number itself. A couple of good midday hours above the surplus floor covers that.
The seasonal swing is the part worth planning around. The Bureau of Meteorology records mean daily solar exposure at Canberra Airport of 8.2 MJ per square metre in June and 9.3 in July, against 25.3 in December. A June afternoon spends long stretches under the 1.4 kW floor, and a solar-only charger will simply wait.
On sizing, SolarQuotes is blunt and worth repeating: “If you have standard Level 2, 7kW charging, a typically sized 6.6 kW solar system will not cut it … If you have Level 2 charging at home, you’ll want at least 10 kW of solar panels to comfortably charge on mostly cheap solar energy throughout the year.” We would rather tell you that before you buy a solar-diverting charger than after.
Source: ACT Government, Climate Choices, “Plugging into the future – a guide to electric vehicle chargers”, no date shown; Electric Vehicle Council, “EV charging at home”, no date printed; Bureau of Meteorology, climate statistics for Canberra Airport (site 070351), prepared 16 September 2026; SolarQuotes, “EV charging guide”, updated 25 August 2026. Checked 18 September 2026.
Has the ACT Government built solar car parks with EV chargers?
It has studied them rather than built them, going by its own published updates. In August 2020 a feasibility assessment of “covered car parks with solar powered vehicle charging stations” was prepared for the ACT Government, as Action 6 of its Transition to Zero Emissions Vehicles Action Plan 2018–2021. It modelled car parks at the ANU, IKEA Canberra and Westfield Belconnen, and found “a genuine business case in support of solar car park infrastructure to facilitate electric vehicle charging”, mainly for sites that use most of their power between about 9am and 5pm, such as shopping centres, universities and libraries. A 102 kW system at the ANU’s Daley Road car park, for example, was modelled to save $27,000 a year in electricity.
The study was written for businesses and institutions weighing up their own car parks. The government’s public charging work has gone a different way: grants to charge point operators. As of December 2025, 74 public EV chargers with 131 charging bays had received ACT Government funding, and there are more than 300 public charging bays across the ACT.
The idea scales down to one home. A solar car park works because the cars sit under the panels in daylight. A house with rooftop solar and a car parked at home through the middle of the day is the same arrangement for a single car, and a solar-matched charger is what connects the two, as set out above.
Source: ACT Government, Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate, “Installation of covered car parks with solar powered vehicle charging stations”, August 2020; ACT Government, Climate Choices, “Public EV chargers in the ACT”, no date shown. Checked 7 October 2026.
Which chargers support solar-matched charging?
These are units on the Australian market whose manufacturers document a surplus-solar function. It is a list of what each maker publishes, not a ranking, and the right unit depends on your inverter, your switchboard and where the car parks.
| Charger | What the maker documents for surplus solar | Also documented |
|---|---|---|
| myenergi zappi (v2.1) | Three modes, ECO, ECO+ and FAST. ECO and ECO+ continuously track on-site generation and household consumption | Supplied with CT clamps; dynamic load balancing; OCPP 1.6J on v2.1 units with built-in Wi-Fi |
| Fronius Wattpilot (Home and Go) | “Dynamic PV surplus charging 1.38–22 kW with automatic 1-/3-phase switching” | 6–32 A, single or three phase; OCPP 1.6 J; IP65 |
| Ocular IQ Home Solar | Three modes, Fast, Solar Assist (minimum 6 A from the grid plus excess solar) and Solar Only (needs at least 7 A of excess) | CT clamps sense household load and throttle charging; OCPP 1.6J; tethered or socketed Type 2 |
| Wallbox Pulsar Plus and Pulsar Pro | Eco-Smart, the maker’s excess-solar function, offered alongside Power Boost load limiting | Wallbox notes on its Australian page that “Solar charging is not compatible with multiple-charger installations and OCPP” |
Not every wall charger has a solar mode. Several popular units manage whole-of-home load instead, which is a different and also useful thing. Before you buy, ask what the unit actually documents rather than what a retail listing implies, we will read the datasheet with you. Our guide to choosing a home charger compares the rest of what separates these units.
Source: myenergi zappi v2.1 datasheet, Rev 2.1.8, July 2023; Fronius Australia, Wattpilot Home 22 J technical data, no date shown; Ocular Charging, “Ocular IQ Home”, no date shown; Wallbox, Pulsar Plus technical datasheet V-2.0 (11/2022) and the Wallbox Australia Pulsar page, no date shown. Checked 18 September 2026.
How does this interact with ACT feed-in tariffs and time-of-use plans?
Self-consumption is worth chasing in the ACT largely because export is worth so little and so unevenly. The ACT Government states it plainly: “Any ACT household or business with a rooftop solar system may be eligible for a FiT. This is organised directly through your energy retailer. These tariffs are voluntary, and the rates are not regulated in the ACT.” It adds that rates “may vary significantly between retailers” and that “depending on your retailer and individual electricity billing arrangement you may not always receive a FiT”.
The old premium scheme is not a way in. The ACT Government records that its Small and Medium Feed-in Tariff Scheme “was closed to new entrants on 13 July 2011”, and that a new, separate system cannot access the legacy rate.
There is a Canberra-specific twist on the import side that surprises most people. Evoenergy’s 2026-27 residential time-of-use network tariff 017 carries a solar soak window of “11am-3pm every day”, priced below its own overnight off-peak network rate, with the peak windows at “7am-9am and 5pm-9pm”. The cheapest network window in Canberra is the middle of the day, which is exactly when a solar-matched charger wants to run. These are network charges excluding GST, not what a customer pays: your retailer sets the retail price and the plan structure, so whether that shape reaches your bill is a question for them.
ACT retailers also sell time-of-use and EV-specific plans. ActewAGL, for example, publishes an EV plan called evEnergy Saver built around an overnight off-peak window and a free weekend charging window, available to ACT residential customers who “own an electric vehicle and have a smart meter”; business customers are not eligible. We do not quote rates for any retailer, they change, and they are the retailer’s to publish. Ask yours what EV or time-of-use plans they offer, and whether a smart meter is a condition.
Source: ACT Government, Climate Choices, “Solar feed-in tariff”, no date shown; Evoenergy, 2026-27 Schedule of Charges, effective 1 July 2026; ActewAGL, “evEnergy Saver”, no date shown. Checked 18 September 2026.
Do you need a battery as well?
Not for solar charging to work, and adding one does not automatically make it better. A battery and a solar-diverting charger compete for the same midday surplus, so which one gets the sun first is a settings decision, and it is cheaper to make before either is installed than after.
The ACT loan scheme treats them as neighbours: household battery storage systems and electric vehicle charging infrastructure sit in the same eligible product category, under one lifetime borrowing cap. If you are planning both, read our ACT incentives page before committing to either.
Sending power the other way, from the car back to the house or the grid, is a different matter here. Evoenergy exempts electric vehicles from its embedded generation requirements “unless the on-board battery storage system is capable of exporting to the network (in which case the requirements shall apply)”. So a normal solar-diverting charger is not an embedded generator, and a vehicle-to-grid setup would be. Hardware is starting to arrive ready for it: Zaptec lists its Go 2 as vehicle-to-grid-ready with the function not yet enabled, pending finalisation of ISO 15118-20. We would not plan a purchase around it today.
Source: Evoenergy, Service and Installation Rules V12 (2025), clause 7.2; ACT Government, Sustainable Household Scheme guidelines, July 2026; Zaptec, Zaptec Go 2 product sheet, 5 June 2025. Checked 18 September 2026.
Does three-phase power help solar charging?
Not for solar-only charging. Because the 6 A minimum applies per phase, a three-phase charger needs roughly three times the surplus, about 4.2 kW, before it will run on sunshine alone. On most Canberra roofs that means a three-phase charger spends more of the year waiting than a single-phase one would.
Two of the units above work around it by changing phases in software: Fronius documents “automatic 1-/3-phase switching” on the Wattpilot, and Zaptec lists 1-to-3 phase switching on the Go 2. If solar-priority charging is the main reason you want a charger, that feature matters more than a bigger kilowatt number.
Three-phase still earns its place for speed. The Electric Vehicle Council says it “is not necessary to upgrade to three phase to install a 7.4kW EV charger”, and that “you will need three phase if you want an 11kW or higher EV charger”. For a charger above 7 kW, Evoenergy recommends upgrading the connection from single to three-phase power, which it handles through its basic design application. What that involves at your place is set out on our three-phase EV charging page, the work itself on the EV charger installation page, and what moves the number on the cost guide.
Source: Electric Vehicle Council, “EV charging at home”, no date printed; Evoenergy, “Electric vehicles”, no date shown; Fronius Australia, Wattpilot Home 22 J technical data, no date shown; Zaptec, Zaptec Go 2 product sheet, 5 June 2025. Checked 18 September 2026.
Is the extra hardware worth it, and what do we check first?
Solar-matched charging earns its keep when the car is home in daylight and the array has genuine surplus to give. Where it is not worth it, we will say so, an ordinary charger on a good off-peak or solar soak window can get you to the same place with less in the switchboard. Here is what we look at before recommending either.
- Your array, inverter and how much you actually export. A year of export data tells us more than the panel count does.
- Whether you are home in the daylight. Surplus charging only pays off if the car is plugged in while the sun is up, or if you can shift charging to weekends.
- Room at the switchboard for sensing. The CT clamps have to sit at the grid connection point and the lead has to get back to the charger. On premises built before 1988, Evoenergy warns that the meter board and the conduit supplying the service cable may contain asbestos, and that work disturbing them is not carried out without suitable precautions. That changes how a job is planned, not whether it can be done.
- Supply type and spare capacity. Evoenergy classifies EV chargers as continuous loads that “must be properly sized”, and says a Level 2 charger requires a dedicated electrical circuit.
- The cable route. Distance from the board to where the car parks is the single biggest variable in any Canberra installation.
- Whether the charger is open. The Electric Vehicle Council recommends that consumers installing mode 3 chargers at home “consider choosing a product with OCPP 1.6J (or higher) communications capability”, so the unit is not locked to one app or one cloud service.
Send photos of your switchboard, your inverter and the spot the car parks and we will tell you what surplus charging is realistically worth at your place. Start with the quote form, or check where we work on the service areas page. If you are in an apartment or a unit-titled complex, the apartment charging page covers the approvals that come first.
Source: Evoenergy, Service and Installation Rules V12 (2025), clauses 1.9.1 and 2.12.1; Electric Vehicle Council, “EV charging at home”, no date printed. Checked 18 September 2026.
Solar EV charging questions we get asked
Can I charge my EV from solar only?
Only while your surplus stays above the minimum. The EV charging standard sets a minimum charging current of 6 A, about 1.4 kW on a single-phase supply. Below that, a solar-only mode pauses the charge. Certain chargers let you top the surplus up from the grid instead of stopping.
Do I need a bigger solar system to charge a car?
Not to charge at all, but a small array spends much of the year under the surplus floor. SolarQuotes suggests at least 10 kW of panels to charge mostly on solar year-round, and says a 6.6 kW system will not comfortably keep a 7 kW charger running on surplus.
Does solar EV charging work through a Canberra winter?
It works, but there is far less to divert. The Bureau of Meteorology records mean daily solar exposure at Canberra Airport of 8.2 MJ per square metre in June against 25.3 in December, so winter charging leans more on the middle-of-day and overnight network windows.
Is it better to export solar or put it into the car?
That depends on your retailer. The ACT Government says feed-in tariffs here are voluntary, are not regulated, and vary significantly between retailers. Compare what you are paid to export against what you pay to import, then decide how hard to chase self-consumption.
Do I need three-phase power for solar charging?
No, and three-phase makes solar-only charging harder rather than easier. The 6 A minimum applies per phase, so a three-phase charger needs roughly 4.2 kW of surplus before it will run on solar alone. Some units switch between one and three phases to work around that.
Does a solar charger need approval from Evoenergy?
A normal one-way charger is not an embedded generator under the Evoenergy rules, which exclude electric vehicles unless the car can export to the network. A bidirectional vehicle-to-grid setup would be treated differently. We confirm the connection requirements for your supply before quoting.