It makes more sense than solar roads.
Comment on Sweden is testing a semi-truck trailer covered in 100 square meters of solar panels
ElectricCattleman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Putting solar on moving vehicles makes no sense except for very specific use cases.
Install those same panels on the ground and you can point them at a good angle for sunlight capture, don’t have to literally carry the weight of them everywhere, don’t have to worry about them getting dirty all the time from moving around winter roads, and are much easier to repair.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
n0m4n@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Solar ditches make more sense.
bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Yes but sadly no one wants to talk about trains.
It’s really killing the Utopian dreams of public transport
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Pretty sure these solar panels aren’t just your regular residential or commercial building panels. They are specially made for this purpose.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Those don’t exist.
Amount of power that can be generated is dictated by the angle to the Sun. You need to be perpendicular. Panels on the ground can slowly move and rotate to kind of track the sun. Or you put a bunch of mirrors and make a tower made of solar panels.
Solar panels on roof tend to be fixed infrastructure. You get what you get.
So if they apply panels to a vehicle you have two options. Flat or angled.
If they’re flat and the only time you’re ever going to get the maximum amount of power from them is during noon when the sun is directly above your vehicle. If angled that means the height of the vehicle has changed and they direction that they work is very dictated. If they track the Sun then they’re probably going to waste more power than they can ever produce by constantly moving because you’re on a vehicle that’s constantly moving.
BakedGoods@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Ah yes. The old “this isn’t an optimal solution that will solve all problems so no one should be working on it”-argument. You must be fun at parties.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Listen this isn’t mixing drinks or some opinion piece were there’s no one clear way. Things cost money. Every company that would seek to implement this is going to be looking at an ROI. Suboptimal numbers is going to make the project look bad and waste a bunch of money. Sorry if I’m ‘not fun’ because I’d rather have functional solar power than the appearance of solar power.
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Those don’t exist.
No one said it does.
Generally speaking, solar panels aren’t optimized for near-constant traveling. As such, it’s “fairly involved from a technical point of view,” said Falkgrim. Despite only recently starting prototype testing on Sweden’s public roads, he explained the project is “about seeing if the solution makes sense, and so far we believe it does.” Although such a design isn’t expected to become widespread on roadways for a few years, Scania’s initial testing shows the tech is not only feasible, but promising.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 year ago
While they could do things to mitigate the angle of incidence, ultimately that same photovoltaic material will fare better angled consistently toward where the sun might be. If you’ve run out of room everywhere else, sure, time to look at trailers. But so long as we have spare other places, those are better places.
The trailer might be going through shaded areas, there’s only so much optics can do to correct for angle of incidence, and the added weight means we are using energy to move them around when they’d be better off stationary anyway.
Even residential solar is a dubious proposition, since you have to work around roof lines that are rarely optimal for solar. In that case it can make some sense for owning your own generation, particularly with battery, to go “off grid”, but I have a hard time imagining similar for the trailer.
Taringano@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’m not a solarogist, but how do you capture sunlight 24/7?
ElectricCattleman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oops 🙊 you know what I mean though.
kionite231@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Put solar panels on a vehical and move it around the globe xD
ugjka@lemmy.world 1 year ago
bet on moonshine
_apokalipto_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Solar panels on one side, lunar panels on the other! Boom! Free electricity 24/7!
Noodle07@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s Sweden, it works weird