PV Gap

Anita Said:

Solarcell Technology?

We Answered:

There have been numerous models of solar cell powered vehicles -- and even an airplane! The designers in all cases minimized weight, got a large array of solar cells, and off they went.

Try searching in Yahoo or Google or whatever for "solar cell car", "solar cell bicycle", and "solar cell airplane"

Luis Said:

solar tech???

We Answered:

A helluva lot of very intelligent, including many downright brilliant people have been working on that for over 50 years. Efficiency of solar cells has greatly improved since then, from about 10% back then to about 30% now. And the work continues and is very well funded worldwide.

By "efficiency", I mean the proportion of solar energy hitting the cell to the cell's output power. There is only about 100 watts per square meter of solar energy hitting Earth when the sun is directly overhead, so today's best cells can output about 30 watts per square meter.

Still more efficient are solar collectors, the type with an array of mirrors that track the sun, reflecting the sunlight onto a tank that holds a liquid, usually water, heats it to steam to drive an engine that has a generator for its output. Efficiency gets up over 50% with that approach, and as well, the progress continues. Best of luck with your project.