https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2025/03/13/stekkerzonnepanelen-zonnepanelen-met-stekker-plug-and-play/

So starting tomorrow you can buy solar panels that you can plug directly in your wall socket.

We personally don't have much use for solar panels atm. We mainly wash in the weekend at lower tarif or dishwasher at night. We pay about 170€ per month for a house with a family of 4.

The only thing I often thought about was to buy a (smaller) solar panel and make a closed circuit to charge our 2 electric bikes on very sunny days (I have a smart home that could regulate the charging to stop or maybe switch to regular outlet if sun is blocked/gone.)

Is this a dumb idea? Not to plug a big solar panel in the wall but just a sperate circuit that just charges our bikes?

by T-LAD_the_band

5 comments

  1. You can buy solar panels with a 230v socket so you can plug in your ebike charger directly into the solar panel.

  2. Een speedelec heeft een batterij van minder dan 1000Wh meestal, maar is rond getal dus makkelijk om te rekenen

    1kWh ligt rond de 30 cent, grofweg. Kan 20 of 40 zijn ook, ma pak nu 30, dus voor 1 euro kan je drie keer opladen

    Zo een plug n play paneel kost misschien 500, dan moet je al 1500x opladen, oftewel elke dag voor 5 jaar, oftewel elke zonnedag voor 12 jaar.

    Ik denk niet dat het nuttig is. 
    Tenzij je een andere reden hebt zoals geen elektriciteit in tuinhuis ofzo

  3. You say you don’t have much use for those solar panels but don’t you have a fridge and other network appliances, since you claim to have a smart home?

    Wether it makes sense for you is hard to say, but you don’t need to make hard calculations to realize that just buying it for a type of ebike is sort of pointless since it’s unlikely to be in your house when the sun is at its’ strongest.

  4. You could, if you really really want to, but you shouldn’t. As mentioned already, it doesn’t make sense cost-wise. But when your bike battery is full or not plugged in, the solar panel is idle and just costing you money instead of earning. Plug it in your home and at least it can cover some of your ‘sluipverbruik’.

  5. As others mentioned – don’t go for the “separate circuit”, it just makes no sense.

    You can consider installing 400 W or 800 W of those panels in the intended plug & play way. And you can do an estimate of the return of this investment.

    – check out the investment price. You can get 800W for about 400-500 Euro
    – estimate your yearly output by taking into account the possible orientation of the panels (there are guides on the internet specifically for balcony panels) and possible shade obstructions
    – consider that without a battery your “capture rate”, meaning how much of the produced electricity you will be able to consume directly out of total produced, will be about 40%. But possibly higher if you change your habits and shift your things like dishwasher and washing machine and e-bike charging to the midday time.
    – consider your type of electric meter (digital or analog that can turn in reverse) and your electricity contract conditions – how much you pay and how much you’d be paid when you inject into the grid (if you have a digital meter)
    – then it’s easy: per year you’ll be getting X kWh (something like 800 kWh with a 800W installation), ~40% of which you’ll consume and thus “get back” 0,4X*your_electricity_tariff + 0,6X*whatever_you_get_when_inject. See in how many years you’ll get back your initial investment.

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