On 1/2/14 5:44 PM, Michael Ross wrote:
It makes a lot more sense to have a solar generating system on your home
and plug in to the home or grid, than to put the array on the car roof.
Soon enough solar thermal collection of hot water will not worth the
trouble... when PV efficiencies are good enough you will be better off
running the power through a heating element, rather than having fluids
pumped around, holes in the roof, plumbing, electrical and control
infrastructure.
Maybe so.
Right now solar thermal is more efficient in gathering energy, from what
I gather. But as people keep trying crazy ideas, the technology moves
forward and your prediction might eventually hold water (without needing
to hold water). :^)
BTW, the University of Colorado Solar Decathlon team designed an
interesting rooftop PV system with liquid cooling - a solar PV/thermal
combination approach that was quite clever in getting the most out of a
small roof area - providing solar thermal heat to the home while keeping
the PV cool.
Same with this goofy carport idea. Just build a proper PV system for God's
sake.
Maybe so, and that's what practical people are doing now for solar power.
But when it comes to R&D for future products, maybe it's a good idea for
university students to have Ford's backing in pushing the boundaries and
experimenting with new ideas, whether they pan out or not.
Cheers,
-Jamie
On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 7:30 PM, Jamie K <[email protected]> wrote:
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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