Quote:
Originally Posted by yoyoyoda
Seeing as its so hot here in Aus I'm thinking of making a pedestal ontop of my roof out of solar panels using flat brackets that I can bend myself out of sheet aluminium.
A safari roof/tropical roof is a second skin over the roof. The air between the two acts as insulation, keeping the roof cooler under hot sun.
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What colour is your car? On my white van the area under the solar panel is much hotter than the surrounds, on a hot day I can touch the underside of the sheet metal that isn't covered by the panel, but the part under it is too hot (don't really have a good way of measuring unfortunately). I've got about a 12mm airgap between the panel and roof skin. The emisivitiy of white paint vs a black solar panel means even with 17% of the sunlight being converted to electricity, it's not enough to compensate for the darker colour.
If you've got a near black car it might just end up at the same temp, but on a light colour car, it will be hotter inside
My aim is for 400w of panels and an alternator delete.