Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Hi Hugh -
Hope that's not too discouraging a response.
Darin
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Thanks for the response
Just after Christmas we moved the boat to our local area and it is now in the driveway. Even though it is likely that this project won't pan out we already have the materials so I might as well give it a shot and see how it works out.
I started taking measurements of the available (and viable) surface areas for potential cell placement. I'll post pictures of the boat later along with some of the cell types that we have available.
At this point I'm not overly concerned with massive amounts of storage due to the expense and/or weight. We'll put the motor in a barrel and hook it up to some panels to get a rough idea of what (if anything) can be realistically used by the motor. That will be a lot cheaper than modding the boat only to find out that it's not going to work
two additional ideas are to layer the polycrystalline cells with an organic dye overlay to try and make better use of more of the light spectrum. It may not be possible or the additional weight may be prohibitive. Anyway, it is just an idea.
The other idea is to eventually fabricate the panels so that they can be raised and used as stiff/solid sail. Obviously there are some interesting possibilities and a lot of problems but a hybrid system (of sorts) could be useful.
Someone asked me "why do that with a powerboat?" ... and to be honest there aren't a lot of good reasons especially since there are other marine platforms better suited to such endeavors. But we have the parts so we are going to go ahead and give it a try and maybe someone else can make use of the information/results.
I'll post pictures of the boat, motor, and other materials later. Thanks again for taking the time to write back. I appreciate it! Happy New Year!
Hugh