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Missouri Wins American Solar Challenge

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sunny-day-fun-time-contest dept.

dagoalieman writes "The University of Missouri - Rolla won this year's 2300 mile American Solar Challenge. The roughly 339lb car (517lb with driver) with 1500 watts of power won by nearly 5 hours - here's the final results. UMR has now won two out of the past three races, finishing second in the last race, to Michigan. Congrats, and good luck to them in the World Solar Challenge!"

14 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Now... by gerf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd like to see real applications. For example, if someone had a few cells on top of their Prius, and were driving cross country, or in Phoenix, how much would it help? This is the news i'd like to hear, the stuff that matters to me.

    1. Re:Now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Some cars have translucent solar cells embedded in their sunroofs. It first arrived on the now discontinued Mazda 929 and current Audi A6's and A8's have it. To give you an idea of the power generated, it was only used to power the fans to circulate air to cool the car down when it was sitting out in the sun.

    2. Re:Now... by homer_ca · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well the specs in the Slashdot blurb are a little off. According to the Univ of Missouri site, it weighs 822 lbs with driver. Of that 176 lbs is the driver and 320 lbs is batteries.

      A Prius has about the same surface area as one of these solar racers. If you covered the entire car with solar cells, you'd get about the same power, 1500W max in bright sunlight at high noon. That's about 2HP which is less power than a 50cc moped, maybe as much power as a lawnmower, and maybe as much power as 3-4 professional bicycle racers. 2HP might be enough to run the headlights and A/C, but forget about it for moving 3000lbs of car + passengers.

    3. Re:Now... by FatlXception · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't know where you're getting your specs but the headline is correct. Our batteries weigh 30kg (66 lbs) as per race rules. Maybe you're thinking of an old lead-acid based car. This car uses lithium-ion polymer batteries.

      And as for the question about the solar cells, they're certainly the single most expensive part of the car, but they're really not that bad. They're gallium arsenide cells sold to us at a steep discount by Spectrolab because they were rejected for use on satellites, but even their rejects are much better than standard silicon terrestrial-grade cells (which incidentally is what we won second with in 2001). The full grade cells run in the millions of dollars, but reject cells like ours can be found in the ballpark of tens of thousands. The bare cells themselves are not significantly thinner or lighter than any other type of cell, but I guarantee the packaging and encapsulation is.

  2. How long? by ravenousbugblatter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anyone know if the times the race takes are getting shorter each year? In other words, is the technology actually getting better each year?

    1. Re:How long? by Cyclopedian · · Score: 4, Informative
      Here's the results of the ASC race from 2001:
      Overall Results

      The leader finished with 56:10:46, while this year's leader finished with 51:47:39. However, looking at the overall top 10, it appears that the 2001 field was slightly better than the top 10 of this year's field. I'd say it means that solar technology is advancing but at a somewhat slow pace. Until we hit that breakthrough that gets the solar efficiency past 40%, we won't see much of any daily applications of this tech.

      Then again, it's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

      -Cyc

      --
      /.'s 10 Millionth
    2. Re:How long? by Alien+Being · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "it appears that the 2001 field was slightly better than the top 10 of this year's field. I'd say it means that solar technology is advancing but at a somewhat slow pace."

      Maybe there was more sun that year.

    3. Re:How long? by utexaspunk · · Score: 5, Informative

      I used to be on the Solar Race car team at UT, and I can tell you that the rules for this and Sunrayce are extremely restrictive as to what kind of cells and batteries you can use (to keep the rich schools from buying all the super-top-of-the-line stuff and outspending the competition), and you're limited to driving the speed limit. It's more of a competition about making a car that won't break down than about speed.

  3. In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    CEO's of the Big Three yawned in unison when told about Missouri's victory.

    One of them asked "Was the winner an SUV that runs on gasoline?" When told the answer, he replied "whatever."

  4. Bad For The Environment by tds67 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't think these Universities should be promoting solar power. The sun is a finite resource. In about 4 billion years it'll be done for. Wasting its energy like this is not helpful.

  5. Solar? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Funny

    So I guess that means no 'VTEC' sticker. Too bad.

  6. As a former UMR student, I can say.... by anonymousman77 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We had no women, but we sure had a sweet-assed solar car. =)

    1. Re:As a former UMR student, I can say.... by Kevinv · · Score: 4, Funny

      See what you can accomplish when there are no women clouding your thoughts? 8-)

      Another UMR grad ('91)

  7. Solar Cell Efficiency? by heli0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is the current progress on this?

    This is what I found:
    http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/0304 21.html

    "17.4% Module Conversion Efficiency Industry's Most Efficient --- April 21, 2003"
    "17.3 m2 of area yielding 3.01 kW (4hp)"

    The surface area (hood, roof) of a 2004 Prius is ~10m^2. So that would generate around 2kW with these panels.

    What are the projection for panel efficiency over the next 5-20 years?

    At 50% efficiency you could get 5kW output for a 10m^2 panel. If you drove 1 hour/day and parked in the sun 6 hours/day you could generate an extra 40hp for that hour on the road. As someone mentioned earlier, slap this on a Prius and you should reach 100mpg+ easily.

    Feel free to fix any calculation errors.

    --
    Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...