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      04-28-2013, 06:07 PM   #32
antzcrashing
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jadnashuanh View Post
Solar power ON a car isn't all that practical except to maybe keep the battery charged up while parked and off. Now, there have been a bunch of long-distance solar car races, but those have the entire body covered with solar cells, bicycle wheels (typically), and weird shapes (and no internal combustion engine). This project is to provide a solar powered charging station for the vehicle. The only place on a vehicle I could see solar cells being installed is maybe on the sunroof (and some vehicles already do that). With the area involved, that might provide in the order of 50W at full sunlight...enough to maybe power the ventilation fan and radio, not move it.
I agree, solar power is more of a trendy thing for rich people to do to show off to other rich people. It costs a near fortune to pull a house off the grid, and this usually involves super high E appliances and compromises in living style. Would be very hard to get any reasonable charging out of a days worth of sunlight at those efficiencies.
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