An engineering issue...

[TechMaster]

My dad had been asking me would it generate enough power if he attached some wind turbines and solar panels onto the car if the car is fully electrically powered.  Just wondering if anyone got any sites with or know of any knowledge about this.  He was thinking the speed that the car travels in would produce enough power, but I kept on getting the feeling it won't.  Just asking help that's all.

Thanks in advance.

[Tintenfisch]

as of right now we're still inthe stone age with electricity.  there are electric cars but they are not really designed for driving other people or road trips.  Last I heard ( a while ago) the fastest they can go is about 40 MPH.  PLus they have no air conditioning or any other oil comforts.

There is a competition though where teams build their own solar powered car and race them.  Wish I could find anything about it.

Problem with solar cars though is you can only drive them on sunny days, come across clouds or a bunch of trees and you're screwed.

so yes it is possible but you're going to need a pretty bg solar board for it.

[Nightcrawler]

I'd imagine wind turbines would only work in an inefficient aero dynamic design or by placing them right at the nose of the car. Otherwise, even at 80mph not alot of wind hits the car anywhere else. Cars these days are designed to cut through the wind, so unless the turbines stuck out the sides or top in some position where they would catch drag or were right at the nose, you wouldn't be getting much wind. And by placing them anywhere but in the nose, you'd decrease your aero dynamics.

The problem with solar panels is they don't generate much power. I'm not into the science much, but I'd imagine you would need to cover quite a bit of the car with solar panels for any hope of real time power. Any concept solar powered cars use solar panels for CHARGING batteries. I don't think anyone has made any capable of driving ONLY with solar panels that would be considered for a consumer.

There is a reason hybrid cars are the only thing mainstream right now. Full electric cars are heavy, can't go fast, and have little power. Full solar cars are useless without sun, still don't generate much power. They would only be useful when coupled with a battery and/or other power source.

[Tintenfisch]

Solar powering can be quite effecient, though I'm mostly saying this from hearsay, you might not even need a battery. but again it mostly relies on the location.  You want sunny areas, very sunny areas where there's little amount of trees and high elevation.  

People have gotton solar paneling they put on top of their house to power their house with success.  So much success that sometimes power companies pay them for the energy they produce.  How much(of either)? I don't know.

[KaioShin]

Solar powering can be quite effecient, though I'm mostly saying this from hearsay, you might not even need a battery. but again it mostly relies on the location.  You want sunny areas, very sunny areas where there's little amount of trees and high elevation.  

People have gotton solar paneling they put on top of their house to power their house with success.  So much success that sometimes power companies pay them for the energy they produce.  How much(of either)? I don't know.

Solar powering is currently extremely ineffective. Of the incoming solar energy you can only transfer (depending on the material) about ~6-8% into actual electrical energy. Another huge bottleneck is the current accumulator technology, which makes the technique unreliable. Solar power may be a solution to our energy problems in 100-200 years, but now it's not much worth.

A little example, to prodice the energy of a single windwheel (the huge ones which generate about 5MW) you'll need to cover a plane of 500m x 500m with Solar Cells! To power a small village (< 1000 people) with wind you need 3-5 windwheels, so you can do the math of how much space a solarpowered plant would have.

The solarcells you put on houses are a whole different story. They do not directly create electricity out of light, but use it to heat up water and use that for electricity generation and heating. They are a bit more effective, because you can use the water to heat your house and not only the electricity, but you can't use that for cars. My dad wanted to put that stuff on our house but after we calculated it through it would take about 10 years until we would save money compared to staying with normal power from the surrounding power-net and these whole 10 years are already heavily supported by the government, without this artificial help, solar energy would be totally unrewarding.

Solar energy is years away from being a real and affordable alternative :p

[Tintenfisch]

http://www.wsc.org.au/2007/

WHAM!

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/solar_plane_around_earth.html

bam! Body slam!

Not that those shouts mean anything, I just had the phrase caught in my head, but above are websites.

the first one is about the solar racing thing I mentioned before

and the second is a short description of a an attempt to fly the solar plane (plane that runs on solar energy) around the world.

I think it's cool, but of course no where near commercial use, unless it's delievering letters a few at a time.  

[Nightcrawler]

I dream of a day where we actual make solar cells efficient enough to have everything on earth powered by the sun! How awesome would that be. Of course, we'd always have to overcome the obstacle of storing enough power to get us through nighttime and cloudy days.

The sun is a huge, non polluting energy source just begging to be tapped for human use.

[Gideon Zhi]

The sun is a huge, non polluting energy source just begging to be tapped for human use.

MY SKIN CANCER TELLS ME OTHERWISE

Nah, just kidding

[Tintenfisch]

Yeah the Sun is pretty awesome, but I heard it's pretty hot.  But that's only rumor.

[TechMaster]

I think if earth was a few kms closer to the sun then we would all be fried, while a few kms away then we would all freeze to death.

Thanks.  Hopefully I can convince my dad to realize it's not possible with current technologies.

Btw, rather than placing solar cells on Earth, I personally think the technology breakthrough comes when men can transmit electricity from space to Earth, since if that's possible then we can put countless solar panels in space and just transmit the electricity back to Mother Earth.

[Tintenfisch]

Nah it's probably just black out the sun and require a vast amount of extention cord.  Plus other problems.

[TechMaster]

Well, you can position them on the "sides" of earth and not right in the middle between the earth and the sun.

Btw, should we use this thread to discuss about possible new technologies that would enhance the current society? (such as, something that would get rid of the damned gum under the seats in university halls or restaurants)

[Tintenfisch]

For the gum question it's simple.  You have these options

1: chew it off (not recommended)

2: use spatula or something similar to scrap it off

3: throw the desk away (or at something)

for the space question.  I'm not to keen on the subject but I can raise a few problems.  

1: The earth rotates and it's impossible to keep something in one spot in space so those panels would drift.  

2: The other thing is we need a long enough and sturdy enough cable to resist the heat of the atmosphere and to reach into space.

3: here's also the problem of space debris that's just floating around so it would have to be durable as hell, even a pea sized rock going at the right speed can blow a hole through iron.

4: Money money money

5: Now lets say we solved all the other problems getting into space would be another problem, the project would take a long because we can't build something so huge on earth and then launch it into space.  It'd be to heavy and cause to much resistence drag during launch or make the shuttle (assuming we're using a shuttle) uneven, unbalence and heavy.

6: How big of a shuttle do we need to carry this thing(s) and supplies, it's going to take a good amount of resorces

7: work force is a problem too because we can't just send any joe schmo in there.  We need physically fit men willing to go back and forth.

8: Instead of having one large panel should we decide to use a bunch of small ones, it's be to hard to keep them all in one plac or from drifting away.

9: maintenence is also quite costly and tedious, not just on the solar panels but on shuttles and the wires too

10: money money money.

11: The panels may block out the sun

I'm sure theres more problems or I'm just making up prolems but hey I'm just speculating.

[RedComet]

1: The earth rotates and it's impossible to keep something in one spot in space so those panels would drift.  

11: The panels may block out the sun

Placing the solar receiver(s) at lagrange points would most likely solve the problems. Two of the five are stable and one, maybe more, is always in view of the sun.

I imagine they would invent some way of transfering the energy in much the same way they communicate with space shuttles and the space stations - neither of which are connected to the earth with a cable of any kind.

[Tintenfisch]

I don't know.  Radio waves and UV rays are pretty different.  Plus without a cable what insurence do we have that they won't float awa or move to a different location??

Plus there's aways the danger that they could fall down on us