Here is a photo of my "solar boat": http://aprs.org/Energy/solar/boat/solar-boatx.jpg
> Or put a full 2-3kw on it and connect it to your home powering it when not > motoring would be useful, cool. A new definition of powerboat!! ;^) Yes, the number of boats and mostly RV's just sitting in the sun 99% of the year are a great place to put solar panels and backfeed the house that 99% of the time. > Though 4-5 mph for solar should be doable... Mine above does 3.3 knots on both trolling motors on full speed. Drops to 2.5 kts at HALF the power. But now I am humbled by looking at your amazing home-built below! I never thought of the autopilot! What a great idea. Because that is all I ever do, is just take a loop around the creek! Bob, WB4APR > My Firefly's motors (http://www.evalbum.com/3432) are only about 800 > watts total power from my crude homemade panel is 140 watts. This gives > me roughly a 4.:1 ratio of charge to drive during daylight i.e. it take 4 > hours of sunlight to allow travel for 1 hour. While that only means 3-4 > miles of travel, it's more than enough to travel to the end of the lake > and back. The boat was purpose built to fish, cruise and dive off on a > small lake so big power or speed wasn't considered but it is still > practical. Obviously more speed requires more power and the panel size > and weight becomes an issue. I have a larger faster electric boat I plan > to convert to solar some day ( http://www.evalbum.com/4767) but I expect the charge ratio to be 30:1 if the boat could maintain full throttle for 1 hour, but likely closer to 10:1 for normal cruising speeds. Dan Baker http://www.evalbum.com/3432 http://www.evalbum.com/4767 http://www.evalbum.com/4544 http://www.evalbum.com/4451 _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
