The local news recently announced that BP has donated a "solar buggy" - a small
all-terrain vehicle equipped with an electric motor and a solar panel - to a
local nature preserve (http://www.news.wisc.edu/15369) .
Casual readers might get the impression that a vehicle of this nature can be
"powered by the sun". A closer reading shows that the vehicle has a 30 HP
motor and a 185 watt solar panel.
One horsepower is equivalent to 746 watts. In order to operate this vehicle
for one hour on solar energy alone, it would have to sit idle in bright
sunlight for fifteen days.
Toyota has announced that it will put solar panels on a future Prius model, not
to power the car, but to provide a portion of the power to run the air
conditioner.
Plug-in hybrids are a good idea, but they are going to demand very large power
plants that are most likely to be fossil fueled. I hope carbon capture and
storage is fesible and affordable.
-dl
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
