I can just picture going out to my "Solar Powered" Ford in the driveway and
finding a puddle of liquid where the car used to be. The Summer sun here in
GA can get pretty warm. :)
Jim M
2012 Nissan LEAF, Cayenne Red, SL
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2014 17:30:35 -0700
From: Jamie K <[email protected]>
To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [EVDL] Ford to debut solar car
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
For those who haven't yet RTA, it says that the solar concentrator is
mounted on a carport, not on the car. The idea is to project more
sunlight from a larger area down onto the car's roof-mounted solar panels.
here's the relevant excerpt:
"The concept car's roof is covered with a solar cells provided by
SunPower Corp (SPWR). But because it takes awhile to charge, Ford has
also teamed with Georgia Tech to offer a special car port for charging.
Ford calls it an "off-vehicle solar concentrator" -- essentially, a
magnifying glass that can track the sun as it moves across the sky. The
car port boosts the power that can be collected from sunlight by a
factor of eight, according to Ford, allowing a full 8 kilowatt charge
over the course of a day. The glass was originally designed for a
lighthouse.
Ford said its internal data show that the sun could power up to 75% of
all trips made by an average driver. And it estimates that the solar
C-Max could reduce the annual greenhouse gas emissions a typical owner
would produce by four metric tons."
I like the notion of getting some help from the sun when parked outside,
even if it's not the major source of power. The tiny solar panel on the
Leaf SL doesn't do much, but it can help with keeping the 12 volt
battery charged under the right conditions. The Ford concept has a much
larger solar panel so it would be that much better, even if it doesn't
create a truly solar car by itself. Future solar panels could become
more efficient but this is a start.
The Carport idea is an interesting idea for leveraging the larger roof
area of a carport for those times when a vehicle can be parked under a
carport during the day, although I wonder about how that might heat up
the paint and interior of the vehicle over time. Right now it might be
more efficient to just put more panels directly on the carport roof
(even though that loses the advantage of having a small extra charging
source with the car itself), but I'm glad to see Ford playing around
with ideas. At some point, ideas and economics mesh and things become
practical.
Cheers,
-Jamie
On 1/2/14 5:11 PM, Michael Ross wrote:
Bill is right about concentrating solar, there is no magic gift doing it.
I test solar thermal collectors in my professional capacity. I recently
tested a concentrating system that made 400F temperatures in the heat
transfer medium.
Do you really want a concentrating system? If you put 3000W into one
meter
on the roof of a car that is what you will get (a 1 meter collector, with
two meters of reflectors around it). There are a number of other
contrary
details beyond this show stopper. Much more practical to fold out a bunch
more PV.
On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Bill Woodcock <[email protected]> wrote:
The roof of the car is the roof of the car. It has a fixed area.
What you are saying makes no sense.
By using a collector as a type of solar funnel you can certainly
concentrate the energy that was going to be disbursed over a larger area
onto a smaller one.
How are you planning to explain to your wife why she should drive a car
with a big-ass funnel strapped to the roof?
It?s not the _bottom_ of the funnel that?s roof-sized, it?s the _top_.
The bottom of the funnel is the PV receptors. Using a concentrator
doesn?t increase the amount of energy collected, because it doesn?t
increase the area of the roof. It decreases the size of the PV receptor
needed, which allows for different economies of production of the lens
versus PV receptor. It doesn?t make magic extra energy.
-Bill
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