Best use for excess electricity on a bike?
 

I would like to streamline my bike in a full fairing and cover the fairing in solar cells to generate extra electricity. I was wondering what would be some good uses for the extra electricity after the electrical needs of the bike are taken care of?

I was thinking an HHO cell can't hurt converting the electricity into a combustible gas, but are there any more effective/more efficient uses for the electricity besides HHO?

Walk before running- I'd suggest just working on/planning the shell first.

A heated seat in this weather. Head light on all the time for safety.

I plan on heated seats in the near future as well as heated grips :D

Well a talking coffee maker is a must have.

How many of the PV cells are going to be pointed at the sun? I suspect that you are not going to get much output from what you can fit on a faring, it will help if the strings of cells are as short as possible because if you shade a single cell in a string then it becomes a load, reducing the output of the whole string, shade half the cells in a string of cells and you get an output near zero, same thing if you don't have them pointed at the sun and I don't mean just having them out where they are getting light, but pointing right at the sun, having PV at an acute angle cuts their output as well.

If you design it well, I suspect that you could get 100 watts out of a full faring, that should be enough to run a regular headlight, LED running lights and the engines ignition system, if it's a fuel injected bike or if it has an ECU then it might take 50 to 200 watts more depending on the age and type of bike.

When it comes to solar you need to go big or go home. Id suggest you aim for a mppt charger controller to keep things charged and topped off and if you are lucky, maybe you will have some extra. Id suggest putting the extra in a battery so if you get beside a big truck or its a cloudy day you can still use your goodies.

If you need to loose the energy, get a dump controller. They use those in wind turbines to regulate speed in high winds. :turtle:

I don't want to dump the energy, I want to use it in some way. Would adding a second deep cycle battery be feasible to store excess energy for use in my house when I get home. Instead of plugging the hybrid into the house, you plug the house into the hybrid.
It would make it awesome to go camping in then! State Parks tour anyone?

How much area of PV are you going to have that is pointing at the sun???
4-5 sun hours per day tends to be pretty average unless you live in Arizona, lets say your electrical loads are only 100 watts, that is nearly 7 square feet of PV panels to have a 100 watt output, I assume that if you are making a faring that you are ridding a distance every day, not just a few miles, so half hour each way is 100 watt hours or more just from the head lights and ignition of the motorcycle, 7 square feet of fairing that is pointing at the sun is a lot of fairing! 2 square feet of fairing that has a good angle and is pointing at the sun at any given point of the day is more realistic so at that point your faring is just covering your lights and ignition of your motorcycle for your commute with no extra!
Like others have said, make sure you have your needs covered before worrying about how much extra you will have.

an extra battery is extra weight.

extra weight is the suck on a bike.

install enough solar to hopefully let you run with the alternator off. do not worry about any more. better to set up any other solar capacity you have in a place that makes sense, like a south exposure in your yard. carrying it around simply wastes energy and makes your bike handle worse.