The MEGA: Cost-Effective Plug-in Portable Solar Electricity for Lower-to-Moderate Income Homes and Small Businesses

Today, Americans can only choose between two photovoltaic deployment methods for their residential solar energy installations: Ground mounted structures, which require large spaces of single-use real estate, and “Rooftop” solar, requiring costly, custom-engineered installations with onerous permitting procedures. This poses a significant barrier for lower-to-moderate income households, renters, and small businesses, excluding them from participating in the upcoming distributed renewable energy revolution. This project explores an affordable technology that fits neither the ground-mount nor rooftop category. It is a new electricity generating appliance in the form of a mobile solar carport designed to shade and charge electric vehicles while also generating electricity for adjacent buildings and the connected grid. It is a new moneymaking household appliance. At the end of the proposed Phase II project, it will be offered as the first commercially available, portable, grid-tied, UL-listed, and permit-free electricity-generating appliance that plugs directly into a 240V electrical outlet. It can be wheeled into garages and shelters during adverse weather conditions, otherwise freeing up garage space, and its portability circumvents structure setback and homeowner association covenant regulations. Instead of site-specific permitting, engineering, and customized construction of rooftop or ground mounted structures, the proposed system is ideally suited to making solar electricity generation and electric vehicle ownership more accessible to lower-to-moderate income communities and small businesses. Phase I has focused on UL-certification preparation in cooperation with Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories. This has revealed additional requirements that have influenced further design iterations. Improvements have addressed safety, portability, caster wheel design, usability of the collapsible wing mechanism, weatherproofing of the system and aesthetics. The technical feasibility study deployed the system with both a micro-grid capable inverter system without backup batteries, and another version combined with micro-grid capabilities and a battery bank. Up to now, five pilots have been deployed and the product is certified in accordance with existing ground-mounted solar permitting procedures in North Carolina and California, which allows for sales in these beachhead markets as a as a ground-mounted gridconnected portable solar carport. The proposed Phase II R&D effort focuses on the establishment of a new regulatory framework, i.e., a modified or new UL standard, for plug-in solar appliances, and the upgrading of the current system design to become the first instance to be UL-listed as a portable, electricity generating household appliance. This will enable the establishment of an automated nationwide interconnect agreement with utilities, exclusively based on sound, scientific reasoning. It will open the electricity generation market to renters and people on the move, facilitating permitting procedures for other portable grid-tied electricity generating appliances, and resulting in a rapid increase of residential solar energy deployment benefiting lower-to-moderate income Americans. It is expected the system out of Phase II will exploit a previously untapped US market of $1.8 trillion, helping to reach the U.S. sustainability goal of a 100% carbon-free electricity generation future by 2035. Every installed unit of the proposed carport appliance will help balance the carbon footprint of up to three combustion cars.