solar and plug in hybrids
Created August 15, 2006, at 10:19 pm by Anonymous
Photovoltaics (solar electricity) and plug in hybrids can be a boon for overburdened city electric infrastructure. We have already seen on both coasts how abundant summer sunshine has fostered blackouts and other breakdowns of the city electric grids in NY and CA.
A vehicle to grid hybrid parked under a solar array can contribute solar power to the grid. Because the hybrid has batteries, the momentary drop in solar output caused by a passing cloud is of no concern. This makes the solar power much better suited for the electric utility.
Besides the tremendous benefit of preventing blackouts, the driver gets a cooler car from the shade of the solar array. This also saves fuel as the vehicle air conditioner does not have as much work to do.
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How long do we have to wait until Automanufactures, or Toyota(being that they seem to be so far ahead in quality and ideas), make a Plug in Hybrid Car, that has solar panals on the roof and hood, and posibly other parts of the car as well. If solar panals were installed on vehicles in a mass production, it would drive the price down and make them an afordable neccessity. Also, the Plug in Hybrid car, should have a switch that allows the driver to select " all electric mode " for city driving. every car made should have this option.
A solar array on a vehicle cannot offset much of the energy needed to propel it unless you leave it parked most of the time in the sunlight.
What solar cells can do, however, is to power the vent (or maybe the airconditioner) to cool the car when parked in the sun. The big benefit here would be to reduce the size of air conditioner needed to bring the car to bearable temperatures quickly.
Thanks for the enthusiasm about solar but photovolataic modules on the car is not the best way to go in my opinion. Much better to put the solar module on a garage or parking lot cover and let them feed the utility grid.
Solar electric modules are already less expensive than $3/gallon gasoline when coupled with Electric Vehicles or PHEV.
One of the troubles I saw in the past is making the solar panel conform to the aerodynamic contour of the vehicle until I found this from Solar Electrical Vehicles.
http://www.solarelectricalvehicles.com/
This company replaces the top panel of the Prius with a solar array that is the exact same shape. This could be the start of a good thing.
Nevada Solar Living
It's just a feel-good step for the most part. The amount of electricity that hits the top of a car is pretty minimal.
If you want a 'solar powered car', put the solar cells on the roof of your house where you can put a whole lot more cells and actually collect enough energy to run your car on. It's also a lot cheaper to put the cells on your flat, secure, roof than on a curved, moving vehicle.
Hi,
I have just purchased a Hybrid Highlander because I have converted my house to solar and basically I want to plug in (eventually) my car into my free electricity...still searching for the right company to convert it BUT the reason I write, is that my solar installer told me that there are new adhesive type solar panels which could be basically glued/attached to the roof of the vehicle and they would harnest sufficient power to run the car.
Where these panels are and who makes them...no clue but I sure could ask both my solar system designer & installer. There is a company in Monrovia, CA by the name of EnergyCS that converts to electrical, that + the panels and off I could go !
Do any of you know what I am talking about ? I am fairly ignorant on the subject and doing my darnest to learn fast....
Thank you,
Thefishlady
Fishlady,
I'm not necessarily the expert on these topics but let me give you a quick dump at least:
'stick-on' solar: I don't know anything about thes but, personally, I'd be wary of the idea. If they just stick on, they may also just blow off. A real solar panel bracket with classic panels will probably cost more inititially but I'd have more confidence in it surviving for long enough to pay for itself than some cheap thing.
Plug-in's: EnergyCS has a good product for converting the Prius to plug-in. It's a bit expensive and, like all schemes to convert the Prius to plug-in, has some limitations (no more than ~35 mph in EV-only mode). I know a couple of people at EnergyCS and know that they are top-notch engineers (good people too) although I can't testify to the quality of their 'product'. My understanding is that they are pretty busy doing conversions for government fleets right now and aren't offering anything to general consumers. To my knowledge, they haven't started converting the HiHy yet either as the Prius seems to be keeping them busy.
I'm curious if anyone else has any further info on this stuff.
I have this idea for a solar electric car that I have been thinking about for a long time now and I was wondering if it were scientifically possible. I heard a few years ago that British scientists developed small solar panels. After remembering this news, I did a search on Google and I found small solar panels that can produce 8 volts of electricity. I know it takes a lot of volts to start and let alone run a car. But my idea is to have solar panels on the car that were hooked up to batteries that can store energy like laptop lithium ion batteries. When would a car be able to have the time to store energy? Most of the time people's cars are sitting in their driveways or on the side of the streets or in parking garages while they are at home or at work. Why not make the car more useful? On this forum there is talk of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology, which I think is a great idea but I want to take it one step further. I was looking at my black scion TC, which has a retractable moon roof and I thought what if a solar panel could be put on it to cover the top of the car and the wind shield to collect solar energy. People are so concerned about keeping the heat out of their cars by blocking it w/ visors that its wasting valuable energy. Is there a way this could become reality of is this fantasy? My thinking is that this may spark others to have ideas or build on this idea.
I have this idea for a solar electric car that I have been thinking about for a long time now and I was wondering if it were scientifically possible. I heard a few years ago that British scientists developed small solar panels. After remembering this news, I did a search on Google and I found small solar panels that can produce 8 volts of electricity. I know it takes a lot of volts to start and let alone run a car. But my idea is to have solar panels on the car that were hooked up to batteries that can store energy like laptop lithium ion batteries. When would a car be able to have the time to store energy? Most of the time people's cars are sitting in their driveways or on the side of the streets or in parking garages while they are at home or at work. Why not make the car more useful? On this forum there is talk of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology, which I think is a great idea but I want to take it one step further. I was looking at my black scion TC, which has a retractable moon roof and I thought what if a solar panel could be put on it to cover the top of the car and the wind shield to collect solar energy. People are so concerned about keeping the heat out of their cars by blocking it w/ visors that its wasting valuable energy. Is there a way this could become reality of is this fantasy? My thinking is that this may spark others to have ideas or build on this idea.
The solar powered car has been one of the "holy grail's" of the auto industry for a long time. While it has been done in specialty projects with custom built vehicles and huge budgets, the best average speeds are less than 40 mph in the middle of the summer and the vehicles are so light that they risk being flipped by passing trucks. The problem is that it takes a lot of area exposed to the sun to collect much solar energy. Car roofs just don't have much area to collect the sunlight.
Your idea of storing the solar energy is good and will certainly help, however, it is unlikely that you can get more than a couple of miles of range after parking a car with solar cells on top in the sun for a day.
They people who do run their cars off of solar energy (and there are a lot who do) generally put the solar cells on the roof of their house (where there is a lot of area exposed to the sun) and charge their electric cars from those. Actually, even better, what most do is to have their solar cells connected to the normal electrical grid so that they sell electricity back to the power company during the day. During the day, the solar cells are most effective since the sun is shining, the power company needs the extra electricity to handle daytime airconditioning, and electricity is most expensive. They charge their EV's from the electric grid during the night when the power company has excess electricity so the prices are low. It all works together quite nicely.
I just finished watching the NOVA presentation on "cars of the future" featuring Click and Clack from NPR. I guess it was from 2006 because I think I had seen it before, and one clip showed them rolling out a new 2007 Chevy Volt.
Anyway, it was great to see all the work that is going in to making cars more fuel efficient, and to use alternate energy sources. The main thing is funding, it seems.
But one thing that was not mentioned was patents. Could it be that everyone is so protective of their inventions that nobody gets to benefit from a combined effort.
What if all the best ideas were combined. I would love a car that had the strength and lightness of the carbon fiber, snap together body, the energy efficiency of a hybrid (E85) electric vehicle with an extra solar panel boost, and even a plug in to charge option.
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