A small Vermont solar installer is seeing a spike in interest for its off-grid electric vehicle charging technology. Solaflect Energy, based in Norwich, has created chargers that are easy, quick and relatively inexpensive to install. The company’s parking lot solar panels collect the sun’s rays and direct them to the car batteries plugged into the system. “It’s sunshine straight into the tank,” said Rob Adams, the company’s chief operating officer. Solaflect has only been selling its solar EV chargers for about a year, but sales and interest in the system are soaring, according to Adams. Some of the hype came after the 20-employee company was featured in August on the popular podcast Now You Know, Adams said. The first charger was installed in December in a parking lot at Dartmouth College. Since then, Solaflect has deployed the units at Middlebury College and a commercial building in the nearby Marble Works District. More recently, the company installed two charging systems at Hypertherm Associates, which makes industrial cutting tools in Hanover, N.H. In the coming weeks, new units are also going in at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and at Dartmouth Health’s Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, N.H. The units have four Level 2 chargers and cost about $50,000 each, but the company is currently leasing them to organizations for $4,000 per year. That option makes them even more attractive compared to the costly process of installing typical chargers, which can involve getting permits, upgrading electrical systems and tearing up parking lots, Adams said. Solaflect has been making solar tracking panels for more than a decade, installing about 1,300 of them at homes and businesses, mostly in the Northeast. About two years ago, the company moved to adapt the panels for EV charging. Because the electrons come straight from solar panels, its 100 percent green energy, unpolluted by grid power, which in New England still comes largely from fossil fuels, Adams noted. There are a few downsides to not being connected to the grid, however. For one, the chargers only work when the sun is shining. A small battery on the unit manages the flow of electrons, but does not store them. There’s also a limit to how much juice the 6.2-kilowatt array can provide. While the system’s 16 solar panels are 40 percent more efficient than fixed versions because they follow the arc of the sun, they can only produce…