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Solar Energy Becoming More Pervasive
TheUploader writes "RenewableEnergyAccess is reporting that Solatec LLC has released a stick-on solar panel kit that charges your hybrid while parked. In related news, the world's largest photovoltaic system will be built, not on the roofs of Priuses, but on the ground of Nevada, and will provide clean energy for the US military."
The Prius has an MSRP of $21,725. At 10% the cost of the car, the solar panel kit ($2,195) seems like a reasonable deal, considering it facilitates 10% better gas mileage. At 55 mpg, the gas cost to drive 200,000 miles (at $2.20/gallon) is $8,000. At 60 mpg, the gas cost to drive 200,000 miles (at $2.20/gallon) is $7,333. The difference is $666. Considering the kit costs over three times what the gas savings amount to, it is hard to market on account of good money-sense. The only consolation is the concept of helping mother nature. I have limited understanding of the fabrication process of the solar panels, so it would be hard to say whether or not mother nature profits from this scenario.
So often we hear fuss about our petrol supply running out. Sure, perhaps someday it will. But like usual, basic economics will take care of the situtation for us. When one energy source becomes increasingly scarce, it will become more expensive. Thus other technologies, such as windmills and solar panels, will become relatively cheaper. And thus people and businesses will switch towards them, as in this case. Anyone with any economics background would have known that decades ago.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Since we got rid of that evil Mr. Burns and his sun blocker. Not to mention all that incessant hooting.
I thought that there are other more efficient ways to harness solar energy.
Like polishing up a bunch of mirrors and focusing them on a source of water. You boil the water, steam spins a turbine and you get electricity.
Do solar panels really give us the most bang for the buck?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Let's triple or quadruple the cost of petrol, for instance, perhaps due to a stagnant American economy or an American attack on Iran. Now you may just see some benefits to such a system. Of course, if the prices rise quickly on such an essential commodity, things might change relatively fast. You may not have a job to drive to, for instance.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I suppose at 0.6mm thick and with "aircraft grade adhesive" they must stick very well, but I still can't shake the image of these going flying off while driving on the expressway. Certainly a step in the right direction though.
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It's widely known that those men want want loud and/or fast cars are often the men with the smallest penises.
It is also widely known that compared to other men, American men have by far the smallest penises in the world. They try to make up for their genital deficit by driving the biggest, nosiest vehicles they can debt themselves into.
Frankly, I'm glad I'm European, and I ride a bicycle. The only problem I run into is keeping my cock from getting tangled in the bike chain.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I thought http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ was a better solution
Learn to love Alaska
Sadly, based on my understanding of the product described in the article, I don't see any way it can achieve any real MPG improvement. It only charges the small accessory 12V battery used for starting the car and running the power accessories(AC, steering, radio, etc). It provides no juice to the 28 200V main battery bank modules that power the engine.
You need something like this then... although it's not really suited for anything other than hotdogs. http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/light/solar_ho tdog_cooker.html
There are plenty of designs available for nice solar ovens & fryers.. anything collapsible is usually a little more work, but worth the effort.
But such curtailing will happen automatically. As oil becomes more scarce, the price will rise. And thus will rise the prices of products which require oil for their production. So the price of plastics will rise, for instance. People will begin to choose relatively cheaper alternatives. So your toothbrush will likely cost a dollar. But it may consist of a wooden handle, rather than a plastic one.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
And include some extra Li-Ion battery capacity and a plug-in bridge rectifier so that it's solar-and-grid-and-gas, and this would be *really* interesting for a dealership add-on. I'm willing to bet you could push it to nearly 25% increase in efficiency.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you're looking to heat water, the focused mirrors on pipe approach works fairly well (or just paint something black and move pipe water through it). Essentially you're just using various tricks to store heat produced from sunlight in a fairly efficient manner.
If you're looking at powering televisions and radios, though, you need to have electricity. Photovoltaics generally work best for that. Turning heated water into electricity does work, though at a lower efficiency.
There's other issues, of course. Just because photovoltaics are more efficient doesn't make them cheaper. There's the long-term costs and how much investment you're willing to make in order to get your cost savings.
Yes, a particular product today may require oil. But as the price of oil increases due to increased scarcity, manufacturers will instead switch to relatively cheaper non-oil alternatives. So often times you'll end up getting the same products, but they'll be made of a different, cheaper material.
It's happened with coins, for instance. While certain coins one contained large amounts of copper, they now are made mostly of zinc with a thin coating of copper.
Remember, plastic is only used so often today because it is so cheap. Once the price of plastic rises, people will switch to other materials which are relatively cheaper.
I lived a good portion of my life before plastic became widespread. We used glass bottles instead of plastic bottles for many drinks, for instance. Somebody who grew up only using plastic might have a difficult time accepting the idea of not using plastic products. But it's more than possible, and was reality even just a few decades ago.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
How about this: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/psa_peugeo t_cit.html
Here, we get about 70-80 percent of the electricity from a solar cell on a grey and cloudy day - yeah, it rains a lot here - but many people have hybrid cars. Way more than most other places.
So, while the hybrid car is sitting in the carpool lot, a rooftop solar panel can charge up the battery - or maybe carpool lots could provide these as plug-ins - while your car is washed clean by the soothing misty rains that drive you insane. Saves on gas cost - especially with the new plug-or-pump electric hybrids that let you plug in if you want to or just use gasoline/biodiesel.
Or you can use cheap hydro or wind power (3/4 of our energy supply) to plug in and do the same thing.
It's not like your car was doing anything - it might as well charge up while it's taking up valuable real estate.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Side note, we get less then 20% of our oil from the middle east, if they drop out completely we would just push harder on Venezuala.
On the other hand, if you buy a brand new VW Gold tdi (turbo diesel) for about the same cost (nicely loaded just under $22k) you get 45mpg (realistic estimate, not inflated EPA). So your fuel costs are similar to the of the Pirus but you have a car with significantly more power and pep. You also have a vehicle that can be feed 100% biodiesel and run with out a drop of petrol. And given the ruggedness of Diesel engines and the VW quality, you have a car that will continue to get 45mpg for 200,000. Compared to the Prius which is going to need new batteries every 3-5 years.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Looks like a CLOUD passed over their SERVER FARM!
Ha! Ha ha! Ha! Ha, ha ha! Ha ha, ha, ha!
Ah, renewable energy! Endless mirth!
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Therefore, here's a cached copy from Google:
http://tinyurl.com/7amp7
I Thess. 5:16-18. "Elephants are the only mammal not known to jump."
Don't know about the cells being used on this particular car-top application, but in general modern solar cells are built to resist wind and hail damage.
n /faqs/resid_sys.htm#faq23
for example:
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/solar/e
Can the modules withstand high winds and hail?
The panels are supported by our roofer-designed mounting system that has been tested to withstand 125 mph (200 kph) winds and can work on almost every type of roofing material. Our modules can withstand one inch (2.5 cm) hailstones at 50 mph (80.5 kph).
Of course, if your car is already doing 50 mph....
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Any system that simplifies or minimizes the logistical load on any military installation or deployment is good for the military. For them, the issue isn't so much the absolute cost, but the availability of electric power when they might need it. Might not have been trivial in an age where field telephones could be energized by hand cranks...but considering the amount of information technology that goes to war with a post-modern army, it's not a bad thing for the guys in uniform to be investigating. If photovoltaics mean that installations in the field will not need as many gallons of diesel fuel to run generators, that diesel can be put to better use ferrying other needed supplies, or evacuating casualties.
Who wants a silent car? We want a car with a soundtrack to be noticed by.
;)
I want a silent car. I don't want or need to be noticed by everyone, just as long as I'm not literally invisible so they run in to me.
I feel no need to impress people on the street with the sound of my car's motor. Don't care what they think.
Then pay me my commission on this idea that I never hear talked about otherwise in any serious manner.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Unless you're storing vast amounts of energy in the largest batteries known to mankind, any energy captured by solar cells is going to quickly turn back into heat again anyway. May I remind you that that is exactly what would have happened had we not captured that energy in the first place.
Now, if you covered a large portion of the planet with solar cells, and used that power to run a giant laser which blasted that energy off into space, never to return, then you might run into some problems. But we don't use energy like that.
Read up on the "urban heat sink effect" of large cities. For every 1 mile radius of city, the core temperature rises up by 1 degree centigrade. So the core temperature for a large city can actually be 10 degrees higher than in the suburbs. And urban development causes rainwater to run off 10 times faster than if it were being soaked up by natural vegetation. This has the effect of disrupting local weather patterns to the extent that a city can actually created a rainfall shadow; an area downwind of the central core which has an artificially higher rainfall (which might not be too bad unless it's acid rain). NASA have more details.
The effect of solar panels is negligible compared to what we have already done.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Putting solar cells on your car is dumb:
Having PV grid-tied, means you feed electricity onto the grid at typically peak usage times, then recharge your car at night at off peak rates.
A Prius' real-world mileage is less than a Golf or Jetta TDI, so it's about a wash.
Meanwhile, the Prius doesn't run on any alternative fuels, while the TDI will (with some degree of modification, NOT including engine internals) run on vegetable oil. Veggie oil kits will run you $650 to abotu $1200 depending on what kind you get. The higher-dollar kind is a single-tank conversion (from Elsbett) that lets you put diesel, kerosene, veggie oil, whatever into the same tank. I'm planning to get it for my Mercedes 300SD.
Assuming we're not going to cut down our vehicle use, there is only one rational answer to propelling them, assuming current technology: Build a bunch of hydroponic algae farms for the production of biodiesel. The leftovers can be used for fertilizer, and meanwhile the algae will be producing oxygen that we need desperately given that we're destroying oceanic life at unprecedented rates and oceanic algae is the source of the vast majority of our oxygen.
Hybrids won't help here, and the total energy cost of the hybrid is probably a LOT higher than a TDI, given the batteries and electrical system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So solar power goes from providing 1x10-1000000000 of our power supply to providing 1.1x10-1000000000, that's a *lot* more prevalent - yes!
But, do you park your car at home? Most people park at work.
...]
The best thing to do, IMHO, is to:
1. get a plug-able biodiesel hybrid car. (most hybrids don't plug in)
2. drive to the nearest park and ride or carpool to work.
3. plug in your biodiesel hybrid car at the park and ride or work carpool lot - either to wind-power or solar-power or hydro-power.
4. PROFIT!
Nothing wrong with having solar in your house, but it's best used there if you're:
a. retired;
b. working at home;
c. taking the biodiesel bus or hydro-powered SkyTrain to worl; or
d. using it to heat the hot water heater or provide passive solar stored for evening heat.
[ok, so I was one of the first 100 Solar Energy Society of Canada members
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I agree it's not economical, but 10%/year degradation is FUD.
More like 1-2%/year for good panels in normal radiation.
(10-20% over TEN years)
Here's a graph..(read down)
http://www.solarstorms.org/Svulnerability.html
The major selling point for any car is image. Thus these hybrids need more grunt in their exhaust.
Maybe, if you're sixteen. Me, I'm interested in 60mpg. I'd drive a neon pink VW bus if it gave me 60mpg.
And while we're talking image, do you think that the only viable image is some neon riced-out rollerskate with a thousand dollar exhaust system? I'd rather have the image of someone who gives a crap about our current oil problems rather than a guest extra from 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The other thing that needs to be considered is what kind of driving you do.
... but if it's true, it could seriously impact the efficiency numbers in certain climates. A diesel engine sees some efficiency hit as a result of the A/C compressor, but its not that significant. (I measured the MPG of my VW with the compressor running and not, and could never get a good handle on what the change was. It was below the error caused by month-to-month differences in my driving style, anyway.) I don't know about anybody else, but I am not prepared to drive without air conditioning, at least until gas is well into the double-digit dollars per gallon.
A gasoline hybrid like the Prius gets its best mileage in city, stop-and-go driving, because of the regenerative braking.
A diesel engine gets its best milage while cruising on the highway at a basically constant speed, in the transmission's highest gear.
I used to drive a diesel VW and *loved* it. It was fun to drive (torquey as hell) and had excellent highway range, well in excess of 500 miles to the tank. However that mileage went into the toilet if I had to do a lot of stop and go driving. Still better than a conventional gasoline car for the same driving, but nothing like a hybrid.
I think there will be a place for both types of vehicles in the future, and which one is most efficient for you depends on the type of driving you do. For me, it's almost highway driving -- a hybrid wouldn't have much of an advantage.
The other thing to consider is the air conditioning and heating requirements. I have heard it said that the hybrids derive a lot of their fuel savings by being able to shut off the gas engine when it's not needed (in city driving), but that if you have the A/C running, it won't shut off because there's no way to run the compressor electrically. If anyone can verify this I'd be interested
What I would like to see is a diesel-electric hybrid: combine the best of both worlds.
I also wish that there was some sort of tax relief for diesel passenger vehicles on the diesel fuel taxes, which are really excessive. They're aimed at truckers, but they've had the side-effect of making diesel artifically expensive relative to gasoline, and hurting diesel car development in the US. This is too bad, because it's a technology that really has a lot of potential. There are better/alternative ways of taxing trucking than putting a tax on diesel fuel. At the very least, we should have some sort of rebate program to allow diesel passenger car owners to get back the difference in taxes they pay over an equivalent amount of gasoline (if not the amount of gasoline that they would have needed to buy to drive the same number of miles, which would be more fair).
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