World Solar Challenge Set To Begin

Mdog writes: "The world championship of solar car racing is about (Nov. 18...ok so I can't wait :) ) to begin Down Under. World Solar Challenge pits high school, university, and corporate teams against each other in a race across Australia's Outback, from Darwin to Adelaide." Mdog supplies some more (ahem) non-partisan information about the race below.

"My Alma Mater's team (which took second in the American Solar Challenge...go UMR!) is looking to take sweet revenge on the evil (*g*) that is the U-Michigan Solar Car team (which won ASC.) Some other North American heavyweights will be Queen's University and U-Waterloo from the frigid north. I'll defer to Ozzies post links to their favoUrite college teams, which, along with the Japanese teams, are often very good. Lastly, watch out for team Solar Motions; out for blood after major technical problems two years ago. Their array is worth...how should I put this...a lot :)

I went two years ago, and this year I'll just be looking forward to this article getting posted on /. *sigh* Good luck and good sun to all the teams. No worries!"

Comments

If only I...

[saqmaster]

... lived in Australia..

Unfortunately the 2 weeks of Sun we get in the UK doesn't quite enable us to do such activities ;)

Good to see this

[Anton Anatopopov]

But what I would like to see would be a competition for fuel-cell based vehicles. Fuel Cells are obviously the way forward for the future, so why is no attention paid to them ?

Could it be that the big oil interests have no interest in a cheap efficient environmentally friendly source of power ?

You have to wonder sometimes when good technology is ignored, is there some sort of hidden oil-company aganda ?

Re:Good to see this

[pmc]

Could it be that the big oil interests have no interest in a cheap efficient environmentally friendly source of power ?

You have to wonder sometimes when good technology is ignored, is there some sort of hidden oil-company aganda ?


And this got labelled informative? Sheesh.

Here you can see a list of solar cell manufacturers - at least two oil companies (BP and Shell) are on it.

Here is a view from the EU about the future of big business in photovoltaics.

Here is an account of Shell's involvement in Fuel Cells and Hydrogen power in general.

Here is an account of some of Shell's involvement with biomass power generation.

Here is an overview.

Still, no doubt these will be dismissed with a "Yes, but apart from the solar cells, the fuel cells, the biomass research, the wind energy, and forestry, what have the oil companies ever done for renewable energy?".

Re:Good to see this

[horza]

But what I would like to see would be a competition for fuel-cell based vehicles. Fuel Cells are obviously the way forward for the future, so why is no attention paid to them ?

There are competitions involving fuel cells, including Future Truck and karting. Fuel Cells take a lot of R&D but when their price begins to decline we will see a lot of independant parties begin to become creative with what can be done... then we will see an increase in the number of races.

Could it be that the big oil interests have no interest in a cheap efficient environmentally friendly source of power ?

The big oil interests certainly have an interest in green energy... if it will make them money. Look at BP buying up all the small solar companies and cornering the market in solar cells.

You have to wonder sometimes when good technology is ignored, is there some sort of hidden oil-company aganda ?

Fuel cell technology is certainly not being ignored, it has massive momentum behind it. Most of this is from the car companies, who don't really care what goes into the engine (oil, hydrogen, etc) as long as people buy their cars. If fuel cell technology fails to take off it will be because of public apathy in supporting it, prefering to pay slightly less for old established petrol based polluting machines instead of the new and inevitably to begin with more expensive green option.

Phillip.

Re:Good to see this

[horza]

Sorry but oil companies are not the people pushing fuel cell technology. Try DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, amongst others. You will find most of the oil companies 'fuel cell research' are actually 'joint ventures' with other large companies where they encourage the use of gasoline as a fuel cell source instead of alternatives such as hydrogen. And though some of the oil companies do some solar research, a lot of their technology is based on buying up small independant solar firms. Oil companies have nothing *against* alternative energy but their motivation is profit at any price. Thanks to independant work being done all over the world, and plenty of governments subsidy, green energy is now being eyed by oil companies as a new cost-effective area in which they can become a monopoly.

Phillip.

You don't need sun for solar

[horza]

I have a friend that uses a solar-powered boat to go up and down the Thames and it works even in cloudy weather. Hence it's still possible even if you won't get the same ooomph.

Phillip.

Re:No Survivors

[danjerdanjel]

Actually, they're safer than that..

Usually the battery packs are kept compartmentalised from the rest of the shell so that they can't spill onto the driver. There is also usually at least two driver's egresses built into each car (even if that egress means kicking out the bottom of the car).

The crashes that do happen are usually brought under control very quickly. The brakes on these things are usually quite good, and the cars are usually able to be salvaged (and of course the drivers are generally safe).

As long as the team is aware and treats their drivers nicely (there are some horror stories about, for example, seatbelts being tied to the chassis of the vehicle bit a couple of bits of wire), then the cars are actually quite safe.

No, yes, and maybe

[cryptochrome]

I happen to be a member of the Yale Solar Car team - Team Lux. So needless to say I've studied solar cars quite a bit. So...

NO: Solar cars today are an experiment in engineering, not a solution to your everyday commuting needs. We can get relatively high speeds and drive all day, but the cars are very wide and long, flat, only hold one medium-to-small person (barely) and are limited by the environment.

YES: Any electric car could easily be supplemented by the addition of a high efficiency array. It wouldn't provide enough power to drive the car all day like we do with the current crop of cars, but since most people only drive their cars about 2-4 hours a day it could help a lot, and could be a real lifesaver if you ran out of power. OTOH, even a well designed commuter car is going to be much heavier than our solar cars and have much less array area. What would make the most sense is for all carports to have arrays on top that could store and transfer energy to the cars parked under them.

MAYBE: I don't know that electrical cars or fuel cells are the (near) future. Chemically propelled cars can potentially be much simpler and more efficient, since they aren't losing power through the extra electrical storage/transformation. And you can make fuel using solar power (you already were with the fuel cells). And until efficiency actually matters and the big-ass SUVs get off the road, it just won't be safe for extra-lightweight cars.

BTW, the plane thing has already been done with the Helios project. And you're right, it has a lot of potential.