The growing environmental impact and rising emission of greenhouse gases have accelerated the research toward renewable energy sources and electric vehicles since one of the main sources of pollution is the CO₂ emissions produced by conventional combustion vehicles. This article presents the analysis of the energy balance between a photovoltaic carport with 4.89 kWp installed capacity and an EV, model Renault Fluence ZE DYN, driven in real conditions. The driving tests were performed during the winter season in the city of Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná, Brazil, with approximately 1.7 million inhabitants and 1.1 million vehicles. During the test period, we attempt to reproduce the citizen’s daily routes through the city, presenting an average consumption of 15.75 kWh/100 km. The carport PV module’s energy generation and in-plane incident irradiation were acquired to calculate the performance ratio, making a comparison after cleaning maintenance possible. The solar carport system has 4.89 kWp and has generated an average of 465.37 kWh during its 24 months of operation. The analysis scenarios consist of replacing part of the city’s combustion vehicle fleet with the EVs (the same as used in the study) and thus determining how many replicas of the presented photovoltaic systems might be needed, as well as the area required for the installations. In a simulation with 15% of the fleet’s replacement, it would be necessary to generate 17,151.8 MWh, which requires the construction of 36,856 carports, covering an area of approximately 1,105,685 m². Finally, an economic comparison between an internal combustion vehicle and the EV determined that the expenditures involving electric energy to charge the batteries are 3.3 times lower than buying gasoline, assuming the same driving routines.

Photovoltaic water pumping systems are available as kits to supply water where the grid does not go. These kits usually are made by multinationals and based on specific components, making the most of small and very small companies, who usually install these systems, dependent on others. Thankfully these companies can develop their own solutions with standard frequency converters and AC pumps. An alternative is to connect the standard frequency converters to a photovoltaic string with a DC voltage of the order of some hundreds of volts. This implies in more than 2 kW of power installed. For many applications, more than 2 kW would be oversized. This paper presents a review of photovoltaic water pumping systems based on standard frequency converters and proposes new approaches for low power applications requiring only up to four modules. These approaches are being investigated and evaluated in cooperation with a company.