Last updated: July 2026 · By Sri Ishaan Solar

Can You Charge an EV With Rooftop Solar at Home in Hyderabad? Combined Solar + EV Charging Setup

More Hyderabad homeowners are asking us the same question this year: "I have (or I'm planning) rooftop solar — can it also charge my EV?" The honest answer is: partly, and it depends on timing, your sanctioned load, and whether you have a battery. This guide walks through exactly how solar and home EV charging interact — what a standard on-grid system can and can't do, how sizing changes if an EV is in your plans, and what to check with your DISCOM before you add a charger to an existing solar connection.

The short answer

Yes, rooftop solar can power your EV charging — but only while the sun is shining, and only if your home's electrical connection can handle the extra load. A grid-tied solar system without a battery does not store energy, so it cannot charge your car after dark. What it can do is offset the cost of your EV charging through net metering: the solar units your panels export to the grid during the day get credited against the units you draw at night, including whatever your charger used. Whether that math works well for you depends heavily on when you actually plug in.

How home EV chargers are rated: Level-1 vs Level-2

Before thinking about solar, it helps to know what your charger actually needs from your electrical connection. EV chargers for home use in India generally fall into two categories:

• Level-1 (portable/trickle charging): Uses a standard household socket, typically drawing around 2-3 kW. This is slow — often adding only a modest amount of range per hour — but it needs no special wiring in most homes and is the easiest way to start.
• Level-2 (dedicated wall charger): A fixed wall-mounted unit, commonly in the 3.3 kW to 7.4 kW range on a single-phase home supply. Anything faster generally needs a three-phase electrical connection, which most independent houses can apply for but most apartments don't have by default.

The bigger the charger, the bigger the additional load your home draws — and that's the number that matters for the next section.

Actual figures vary by charger model and vehicle — always check the specific charger's rated power and your EV manufacturer's recommendation.

Does an EV charger share your net-metering connection, or need a separate one?

This is the question we get most often from customers who already have solar. There isn't a single blanket rule that applies to every home — it comes down to your sanctioned load and your DISCOM's process. Here's how to think about it:

• Sanctioned load is the ceiling. Your DISCOM (TGSPDCL/TGNPDCL depending on your area) sanctions a maximum load for your connection. Your rooftop solar capacity and every appliance you run, including an EV charger, needs to fit within — or be added to — that sanctioned load.
• An EV charger is a real addition to your load. Unlike a fan or a TV, a Level-2 charger alone can draw more power than several other home appliances combined. If your existing sanctioned load was set before you had solar or an EV in mind, it may not have headroom for a charger on top of your normal household draw.
• There is no need to invent a number here — ask your DISCOM directly. Whether your specific home connection can absorb an EV charger without changes, or whether you need to apply for a load enhancement (and possibly a three-phase upgrade) before installing one, is something only your local TGSPDCL/TGNPDCL office can confirm for your exact sanctioned load and meter type. This is worth doing before you buy a charger, not after.

Can solar directly power your EV charger, or does it still need the grid?

This is where we want to be very clear, because it's the single most common misunderstanding we run into. A standard on-grid (grid-tied) rooftop solar system — which is what most Hyderabad homes install — does not have a battery. It generates power only while there's daylight hitting the panels, and any solar power your home doesn't use immediately gets exported to the grid through your net meter.

That means:

• During the day, if you plug your EV in while the sun is generating and your home's other consumption is low, your charger can draw largely from solar generation in real time.
• At night, your panels are producing nothing. If you charge your EV after sunset — which is when most people actually plug in, after coming home from work — that power comes entirely from the grid, exactly like it would without solar at all. Net metering only credits you for the solar units you exported earlier; it doesn't physically store energy for you to draw on at night.

So a grid-tied system doesn't "run" your EV charger off sunlight after dark — it offsets the bill for that night-time charging through the credits your system earned during the day. Over a billing cycle, this can still meaningfully reduce your net EV charging cost, but it's a financial offset, not a direct physical connection between your panels and your charger at 9 PM.

Timing your charging to daylight hours

If you don't want a battery, the simplest way to get real solar-powered EV charging (not just bill credits) is to shift your charging schedule to daytime hours when your panels are actually producing:

• Charging on weekends or days off, around midday, when solar output typically peaks.
• If you work from home, plugging in during the afternoon rather than overnight.
• Using your EV's or charger's scheduling feature, if it has one, to start charging during typical high-generation hours rather than immediately at night.

This won't suit every routine — most people plug in overnight out of habit and convenience — but for households that can shift even a portion of their charging to daylight hours, the overlap between solar generation and EV load goes up directly, and you rely less on net-metering credits and more on real-time self-consumption.

Sizing your solar system if an EV charger is part of the plan

An EV charger is one of the largest single loads you can add to a home, often larger than your air conditioner. If you already own an EV, or you're planning to buy one in the next year or two, it's worth accounting for that upfront rather than sizing your solar system purely around your current household consumption.

At Sri Ishaan Solar, we install fixed residential packages — 3kW, 5kW, or 10kW — sized to your home's actual and planned load, not arbitrary numbers. A few things we factor in when an EV is part of the picture:

• Your existing household consumption (lights, fans, AC, kitchen appliances) as the baseline.
• Your expected EV charging pattern — how often you'll charge, what charger size, and roughly how much of that charging can realistically happen in daylight hours.
• Your sanctioned load headroom — since your solar capacity is capped by what your DISCOM has approved, this needs to be checked before finalizing a system size.
• Whether a bigger package makes sense now versus adding capacity later — since rooftop space, structural load, and your sanctioned load all factor into whether a future upgrade is straightforward or not.

In practice, most homes planning for an EV alongside solar find that stepping up one tier — say from 3kW to 5kW, or 5kW to 10kW — gives them meaningfully more daytime generation to offset the new load, without over-building. But the right size still depends on your specific roof, load, and charging habits, which is why we size every system individually rather than quoting a one-size-fits-all number.

What this means with the PM Surya Ghar subsidy

The PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana subsidy — up to ₹78,000 for systems of 3kW and above — applies to your rooftop solar installation itself, based on system size, not on whether you're also installing an EV charger. Telangana does not currently have a separate state-level top-up on this subsidy. If an EV charger pushes you toward a larger system (for example, from 3kW to 5kW) to cover the added load, the subsidy slab you fall into is still determined by your final solar capacity, so it's worth checking the applicable subsidy amount for your chosen package before finalizing.

A realistic checklist before you combine solar and EV charging

1. Confirm your current sanctioned load with your DISCOM, and ask specifically whether it covers an EV charger on top of your existing home consumption.
2. Decide on charger type (Level-1 portable vs Level-2 wall unit) based on how fast you actually need to charge, not just the fastest option available.
3. If you're installing solar for the first time, tell us about your EV (owned or planned) so we can size the system with that load in mind.
4. If you already have solar and net metering, check with your DISCOM before adding a charger, rather than assuming your existing setup automatically covers it.
5. Set realistic expectations about night charging — it will still draw from the grid unless you add a battery, even though your solar system is helping offset the cost.