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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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Rough estimate of 72 cell panels at 2m² and 500W per panel puts this at a peak performance of 25kw. More than twice the average home installation.
Yes, but also much less efficient due to the angles. These panels are either completely flat or completely vertical. Ideal conditions have them facing south at an angle.
I feel like it could be great for running cooling systems on trailers and stuff like that, not sure if it would be worth the hassle for adding range.
Even on a purposely designed solar car like the lightyear one it really only works because they used all the weight saving and aero tricks possible, which you can't really do with a truck that's supposed to haul cargo.
Yeah. the one good use I see is reefer trailers. Since some times they have to sit long times, with still the coolers running to keep the cargo within demanded thermal limits to keep the cold chain uninterrupted.
Most cooling is obviously needed when it is hot... so in summer and thus sung light time. So the panels would probably nicely run the coolers instead of having a fuel burning generator keeping the coolers going.
During winter, when there is no light. Well it's probably cold enough ambient the reefer isn't using lot of cooling anyway.
20kwc capacity: nice also add 20kwh lithium storage at 200kg weight and it could help in few instances like cooling perishable cargo or driver's cabin when engine shut off, but definitely not to expand range
Yeah but we're talking 100 square metres here, that could make a significant difference.
Only about half of it would actually be producing power at any one time, at a sub-optimal angle.
But I'm sure someone did the math and it makes some kind of sense for whatever use case they're imagining. Would still probably be better to have static solar panels along highways and charging trucks with some kind of pantograph setup instead.
I would not put too much weight on that. The number of solar roadway projects and similar tech that when you run the numbers shows it being a complete waste of time - only for many different cities to invest in running a test (at their own expense) only for the project to fail later on for being too costly and not giving the benefits they were promised. Solar solutions seem to be the modern day monorail grift from the Simpsons...
This is the type of thing we should be investing in first IMO. A solar truck might make sense some day when solar is cheaper and more efficient - but we currently have a lot of static infrastructure around solar we could be building instead of these less efficient trucks (that is in terms of use of the solar cells, rather than the trust itself).
That's basically the way interurban trains operated for years before the highway system and personal vehicles replaced that mode of transport. It wasn't solar powered back then, but the idea makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I know it's basically reinventing trains, but it would be a great inbetween solution to have trucks stay in a dedicated lane in a semi-automatic mode on long stretches, while they can service the last few kms without having to transfer the load.
If you call them PanoPods you can probably get venture capital funding and then just go buy a train and paint it with a cool design.