Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
Why would you not settle for a solar panel/Bonneville spoiler and have it improve the aerodynamics?
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I'm not sure what exactly you mean by that? I assume you mean make a spoiler out of solar panels? That would be cool, but almost certainly impossible with the sizes of solar panels I have seen and surface area would be quite limited.
The 50 watt panel I got is about 14 X 30 and cost about $50, which is about as close of a match as I could find for my approximately 15 X 45 trunk deck.
The only option I saw that was closer would be using two 13.5 X 22 inch 30 watt panels, but that setup would have cost about twice as much and weighed about 6 pounds more for only 10 watts more, which didn't seem like a good trade off to me compared to adding a 200 watt flexible panel to the roof later on if I end up wanting more power.
At current prices and rated specs, a 50 watt panel on the trunk and a 200 watt panel on the roof would provide up to 250 watts for about $289 and weigh around 16 pounds. That ends up being around $1.16 per watt and 15.6 watts per pound.
Dual 30W panels on the trunk and a 200W panel on the roof would cost about $339 and weigh about 22 pounds for up to 260 watts of power. That's about $1.30 per watt and only 11.8 watts per pound.