PV Gap

Marian Said:

Should we put solar panels on hybrid electric cars so that they will charge when in a sunny parking lot, etc.?

We Answered:

Any electric or plug-in hybrid car can be solar powered.
eg http://www.green-car-guide.com/features/…
Tesla Motors can arrange installation of solar panels on an owners home or owners can purchase electricity that has been created by the company’s large scale solar farm partners. This pollution-free electricity is fed into the grid and directly offsets the electricity used to charge the car.

it is not practical to put on the car because of the extra weight & wind resistance, the area required, and little issues like driving through tunnels in cities like Boston where there is little light at street level.

The problem with plug-in hybrids is that the patents for NiMH batteries are owned by texaco or Chevron, and they prevent making or selling large enough batteries to make the electric only range >3 miles.
But there are Li-ion batteries that will deliver, http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com, so we can get rid of the noisy, smelly part of the hybrid.

Steven Said:

why don't they put Solar panels on roofs of electric car ?

We Answered:

It could be done. The car would need an alternate charging system keyed to the solar panel, and the payback would be poor, but the car would get something.

If you could be assured that no one would put things on the roof, perhaps 200 to 400 watts of solar panels could be put up there, equating to 1 to 2 kWh in my area of California. That would give the car some 2-6 miles of extra range per day.

Dorothy Said:

If solar solar panels on your roof and your electric car make you more competitive, why should taxpayers subsi?

We Answered:

Perhaps you should ask the same of your nearest petrochemical company. They are making record profits AND being subsidized. They have no use for being competitive. Petrochemicals are a monopoly on our transportation system.

Worldwide Fossil fuels (there are only 3 of them) receive 12 times the subsidies of all the alternative fuels. http://www.gizmag.com/government-subsidi…

As a result "fairness" comes to mind.

Harold Said:

WHAT ARE THE SOLAR PANELS ON POWER POLES?

We Answered:

Here is an article about this.

They use the poles (which they already have) and install power panels, the electricity is given into the grid.

There are companies in NJ which use google earth to find buildings with large roof tops (imagine all the warehouses !), contact them and lease the rooftops to install solar panels, there a different ways how to finance that (by them, by the company, ....) and they sell the electricity into the grid and receive a certain price for this. Usually the refinancing is 5 - 7 years of the investment, after this is profit for additional 15 - 20 years.

Walmart had a project to put solar panels on the super centers ....

Dennis Said:

if u had one hundred acres of solar panels, how much electric power will it produce?

We Answered:

This is dependent on a number of items most importantly the band-gap efficiencies of the solar cell you use. Single band-gap maximum efficiency is about 29%, some new triple junction units are up to about 35.8%. In general through you could reasonably expect to get about 9 Megawatts per 100 acres at peak solar incidence. Actual energy delivered will depend on how much sun light you get over time.

Hope this helps,

Newton1Law