as someone that would love to live the nomadic life from the road side and be on a permanent road trip dashing back to england via little plane trips i got think about solar the other day. i know a lot of car companies are starting to do this but i was wondering about right now, i don’t need an integrated solutionsthat’s probably gonna be ages to arrive. i was thinking about today. if i was to pick up parts to give that a go? who’s good at numbers here? who wants to take a stab at it?
let’s say ‘my friend’ was buying a solar panel, say 480 watts of power on the roof and let’s ignore the sunny/cloudy argument and instead think of the car just sitting around for say a week, not doing anything, well let’s say moderate power usage from running the hepa filter at night to provide a nice sleeping experience, but apart from that, sitting there for say 6/8 hrs a day in pretty bright sunny conditions near the equator, let’s say, malta. .. ;)
i’ve seen some maths in other forums saying. ..
85kWh = total battery capacity
300 miles = capable distance traveling at 55mph
85kWh ÷ (300miles ÷ 55mph) = 15.583333 kW
= 8 kettles or toasters running at the same time
now i know that solar panels are not very energy efficient but are getting better but does anybody have the maths chops to come up with a good figure of how long (if it’s even possible to hook into providing enough juice into the outside hookup part) it would take to at least trickle charge a tesla a little bit, is the 480/500w panel just too small to have an impact and would just take ages, does the tesla expect only certain voltages coming in and have power logic if not say a hi power input at the entry level?
like i said at the top. ..
i’M JUST ASKING FOR A FRIEND. . …
I don't think a 480W panel would fit on the roof, but let's say it does.
50 hours of good sun a week makes 24kWh. Conversion losses and charging inefficiencies, say 8%, leaves 22kWh. That's a quarter of the battery capacity.
Roughly 8-).
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
interesting. yeah i doubt it would fit either but i would build some kind of canopy thing to fit in a trailor if that was the case, it would probably be 2 x 240 watts, i wonder how many miles a quarter tank of electric gets me, i'm guessing maybe 30/40 miles, so basically i could boondock for a week somewhere, charge her up in the week offgrid, drive another 30/40 miles and keep doing that ;) - interesting. . . ;)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I'm guessing a 200W panel would just fit, yielding about 9kWh per week. It's better than nothing, but still ...
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
if access to fuel, power was a problem, i'd take the drip feed anyday. .. like i said, i was asking for a friend ;)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Love it. Recently had the same thoughts... for my friend of course...
I think there are several considerations to make, not even just the technical side, what about the finance aspect?
To make it viable and a cost saving exercise it might help if you don't start off with a 100 K vehicle.
The idea sounds good in theory but from a practical perspective I think the size of the solar array needs to increase a lot. We are still an order of magnitude away.
What about finding solar array houses that would let you fill up for free?
Would love to hear a practical calculation based on an economical vehicle.
I am thinking that eco wise it makes more sense to buy a cheap diesel and convert it to run on vegetable oil. perfectly feasible
For yhe electric car idea what actually might make sense is to have a little generator with you to give more flexibilty...
https://goo.gl/images/u7onbC
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
it's always interesting to me when people bring logic (and wisely too) to the equation about viability. is it viable that we have all these polluting cars on the road adding to the climate problem? no. but they exist. life happens anyway, i love the way we want our investment back before we go in, i guess it's why we don't worry about the climate so much because we are told it's not gonna be a problem for a 100 years from now, most people say 'i'm gonna be dead, so it does'nt matter' - the truth is, life costs from the moment we are born! :)
horses for courses, we all have our own ways of looking at things. the initial plan for any electric car or van (the nv-e200 from nissan would be an option and much cheaper) would be a solar carport. but i was just 'asking for a friend' in case of making an interesting storytelling vlog from power from the sun.
the 480w was purely from having access to say 2 x 240 and 'my friend' does'nt want want to fully charge it. just wanted to consider it from the perspective of boondocking, could i have a mini trailer with an array, could the electronics work today with an inverter, could it give it a drip feed if it was sitting somewhere offgrid. .. just ideas. . ;)
my life has never been about practical and it's certainly will never be put in a viablity box ;)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I know I was just messing about. I like these thought experiments and I'm sure at one point we will get to some viable self contained electric car and charging solution...
Maybe the answer will be also decentralisation... say each house would have solar panels and a charging post in the street... selling it to the driver instead of the electrical company...
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
let's hope so! :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit