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- cross-posted to:
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Scientists develop mega-thin solar cells that could be shockingly easy to produce: ‘As rapid as printing a newspaper’::These cells could be laminated onto various kinds of surfaces, such as the sails of a boat to provide power while at sea.
Here’s a video of a camper van with traditional solar panels on the roof using a slide-out awning technique.
https://youtu.be/Ev5C9gf0zFc?si=97piy-3mV9TIsRlu
You might say that’s impractical for regular use. Sure, it is, but your previous argument was that is was impossible due to physics, which the video clearly shows isn’t physically impossible, so we’re already much closer to a reality. I’m not saying it could drive forever without stopping or be the only power source. That’s silly. But if it reduces the need to charge from a grid by X% it can be a useful technology. Go on now and tell me how it could never ever work.
A camper van. Which has electrical use for things besides turning a motor. Yeah, that’s useful, but it doesn’t exactly help your case.
Under optimal conditions, the sun gives us 1000Wh per square meter. Let’s say you have a 100% efficient solar panel. A semi truck trailer has a max of 42 sq meters on top of its trailer. So you get 42kWh out of this.
It takes about 280kWh to keep a semi truck at cruising speed on the highway. Thus, in this most optimal scenario, it would give you an additional 15%. Even this assumes there is no additional aerodynamic drag from the panels, mounting hardware, or wiring. It wouldn’t take much to completely blow that 15% away.
If it’s a cloudy day, all of it is now deadweight, and now hurts more than it helps. If you don’t drive on the equator, its output drops and it now hurts more than it helps. If you have solar panels that actually exist that do around 20% efficiency instead of 100%, it now hurts more than it helps.
I guess we could move the Earth closer to the sun. Won’t help our global warming problems, though.
It also turns the motor bro, did you watch it?
Of course it does. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Did you math?
You first said is was physically impossible. I’ve shown you it wasn’t and predicted you’d move the goal post from possibility to practicality. And you did. Thanks for proving that you don’t really care about whether it could even possibly work, but just that you wanna dunk on excitement and be right on the Internet. Have a good day.
I never said this.
“There are physical limits at play to how much power this can provide. No amount of technological improvement can break them.”
Also, the fact it powers the motor for the camper AND all the appliances and such just proves the viability that much more, as the extra power draw is still supported by the camper’s solar power system.
Yes, there are physical limits. It cannot provide enough power to justify having it only for the purposes of turning a motor. A camper van can justify it because it has lots of uses for electricity besides turning a motor, and as long as you’re paying the cost anyway, might as well connect it to the battery charging circuit.
You started this conversation with:
All things that primarily turn a motor. None of these are feasible to be powered this way.
Your physics isn’t terrible but you’re making absurd leaps into nonsence with the rest, you also don’t seem to have practical awareness of trucking logistics.
Here’s a thought experiment, if sticking news paper to the outside of your truck was proven to give a 5% fuel cost reduction how long do you think it would take before you see a truck covered in news paper? Probably hours at most, truck drivers don’t like stopping to piss because the extra fuel required to accelerate to highway speeds cuts into their margins so you can be damn sure that if there was an inexpensive way to reduce the cost of charging their truck everyone will be on that.
Also trunks have a lot of stuff beyond the motor, security and logging systems for example as well as various forms of climate control. Also being able to leave a vehicle idle and have it’s fuel slowly increase instead of decrease / denature is a huge thing in a lot of situations.
If course is not going to make a truck that can drive a heavy load without recharging but if its only going to cost the same as a paint coating and can supply a slow trickle then it’ll be a very popular product.
Even more so for things like agricultural machinery, leasure vehicles such as campers and boats, or anything with large gaps between uses.
So you did say that. But you just told me you didn’t. You’re confusing. I also showed you a motor powered this way yet you say it isn’t feasible. So I really feel like I’m done with this conversation. Good day.