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Old 01-06-2013, 10:00 AM   #13 (permalink)
Ryland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VeeDaub View Post
Solar cell infused fiberglass hood, roof, trunk attached to a charging regulator so the car will charge itself for the 9 hours while I'm at work and it only has to drive me home so range will never be too far for only a few batteries.
I thought you said you live in Canada, not on the equator, so at least in the winter you would almost be best off putting solar panels on the side of the car, not the top, you want your panels as close to the latitude angle as possible and unless you live in a cloud free area you are not going to get 9 sun hours of sunlight per day, 3-4 is more likely, Arizona averages 6.5 sun hours per day.

Here is a web site with tools to figure out your output in different months at different angles,

A few years back I figured if I covered the roof of my electric car with solar panels, that I had enough space to give me a mile per day of range, on some cars you might have 4 times as much space and be able to optimize it a bit more, so maybe 5 miles of range could be squeezed out of some cars but I don't see anyone getting much more then that without building a super light car from scratch.

Last edited by Ryland; 01-06-2013 at 10:07 AM..
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