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Sweden is testing a semi-truck trailer covered in 100 square meters of solar panels
(www.popsci.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Solar is not that efficient. They will gain a extra mile. Whoop Dee doo.
Solar is getting more efficient by the week. It'll always be a marginal gain but it's still a gain. An applications engineer somewhere is likely doing the cost benefit analysis to determine the cost per panel to km of drivable energy produced to determine the x number of year return on the panels. If you assume the lifespan of a commercial long haul truck is about 20 years it could add up to a decent amount of energy savings and the panels would still retain some salvage value after that lifespan.
I love your optimism, bit that's not how any of this works.
It will never be more efficient to put panels on the vehicle. Any vehicle ever. Dirt, trees, buildings, bridges, tunnels, etc. All block light. And panels available today, are around 23% efficiency. And they only get worse over time, estimated a 90% lots at 20 years.
Could they make better panels someday, sure. Would it still make more sense to put those panels on top of buildings or an open areas where they can get lots of sun. Yes.
The issue is that while it may be a trivial gain, that same photovoltaic material would generate more energy in a fixed installation. Also, as an installation on a truck, the weight of the system contributes to the energy needed to move the truck, somewhat negating the benefit.
So sure, have your electric truck. The trickle charging of any onboard solar system wouldn't even be noticeable though, and it's better to have the panels on grid helping drive the charging infrastructure. I saw someone guesstimate a theoretical peak of 25kw. My car charges at home at half of that, and even for my comparatively tiny car, that takes a long time to restore range, compared to it driving down the road. The truck might be able to get an extra 5 miles of range per hour of peak sunlight with 25kw system under realistic conditions, and that same material might be able to extract 40-50% more energy over time in a fixed installation.
Might be enough to run the compressor if it's a reefer.
Not nearly.
874sq-ft is needed for 15kw a trailer is 450. A reefer is around 15kw and needs to be able to run all day and night some times. Just wouldn't work at all. Especially if you had to carry around the batteries for night. It would just be way too heavy.
I don’t know why you’re behind downvoted. Solar still isn’t great for vehicles. This probably about 7-10 days of travel a year at best.
Seems like there would be better green tech to spend this money on. This seems like a lot of money for not much impact.
Not much impact for a single vehicle, but if somehow magically deployed at a mass scale 10 days of travel a year erased from even just half of our shipping truck Fleet would be a significant boon.
Let's not forget the panels don't only work when the truck is in motion, there are lots of trailers that just sit in the yard for good chunks of the year. They can now be plugged in and feeding the grid during that time
How much more of an impact could these panels make if they were put in stationary places where they can make better use of the available light. Rather than have one side always be facing away from the sun and the other not being optimally placed with only the top being somewhat better placed? Not to mention when there is any shadows from trees, buildings etc during the trip. Could we do better by just building a bunch of service stations along the routes that have these panels instead that truck drivers could plug into periodically? Or even be charging batteries that can be quickly swapped when a truck arrives?
IMO this is only a viable option when panels are dirt cheap, we already have solar stations around the place. And ATM seems like we should be better investing in those stations first.
Given that is about $20k for panels panels on a home, and about $200k to convert a truck to electric.
Given the option of adding panels to 10 trucks, or taking another ICE semi entirely off the road, it seems like the latter is a much bigger win for the environment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They can gain 50,000k extra a year, but its also a plug on hybrid so don't know how much is panel vs hybrid.
I just want to point out that 50,000k = 50,000000.
Sorry, 50,000 km
5,000 not 50,000
5000 not 50000