Solar panels on cars... should it be a thing?

Sadly it doesn’t seem like these will be very popular anytime soon unless the modern solar panel gets a huge upgrade to actually make it worth it. Happy reading!

I’m subscribed to a Youtuber who does car reviews and saw his video about this. Sad that the panels don’t do much to charge the battery back up. I wish they could improve on this so people can drive without gasoline to and from work by just recharging battery through these panels

I don’t know that much about solar panels, but I hope they would be able to have some strong protective glass over top of them. I just think about rocks on the highway, hail, or any other thing that can damage them and cause an expensive repair.

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The weight of the panels in general cost more energy when driving than the added energy generatef. So it only helps while sitting still, and not much then. Too small of an area. And too high of a cost.

Someone had the idea to make roads out of solar panels - turns out to be a pretty theory, but rough in practice. Roads are high grime, high impact environments that have to be replaced regularly anyway. Solar panels need to be clean and clear, and don’t take impacts well.

Sometimes it is best to keep the generation separate from the end user. What we need more is better batteries.

Weight, the energy delivered vs energy to overcome inertia and gravity of the added weight.

Cooling. Solar panel efficiency drops with heat, so you typically need them propped up to allow air flow or force air underneath them - so on a car would be more like a roof rack, held up off.

Wind resistance, if you added air flow underneath, that is turbulence so vehicle is less aerodynamic.

Angle. The energy produced is strongly based on angling to the sun, so you’d need then tilted basically south. Then the aerodynamic problem, imagine if south was behind you (heading north) you’d have a big windsail drag effect.

No, the most intelligent approach is:

  • a global solar energy production and distribution. Solar farms in sunny low population areas, there’s at least 9 of them on the planet, the cost per unit energy is low, the impact is low.
  • a global energy distribution network. Electrical energy does not go far along wires, about 1000 miles is do-able but becomes less so. So you also need to use electrolysis to split water into hydrogen, then compress hydrogen and pump it along tubes which have to be cooled, ideally by being underground, augmented with tankers.
  • hydrogen fuel cell cars for longevity.
  • hydrogen burning power plants - their exhaust is water which is clean drinkable for humans or farming.

This is not that complex, no harder than the fossil fuel ecosystem now. Just need collective will.

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Alternatively - roll out Gen 4 modular nuclear reactors with some accelerated approval timelines. Far more scalable, less environmental impact, and generally leading to local energy sufficiency rather than more fragile long range transmission systems.

Then you can generate the hydrogen locally. I agree that is quite a solid energy storage technology, with a lot of potential for use in vehicles and peak load management. Of course, the explosive potential is also quite high, so security and isolation requirements on that become much higher.

Ugh.

A nuclear fission reaction requires proactive working systems to stop a runaway explosion.

A nuclear fusion reaction, in contrast, requires proactive working systems to keep it working, and if those system cease then fusion stops.

Fusion also creates less radiation. It’s making the core of the sun, high pressure, using magnetic fields, and if those fields fail the reaction stops.

Fusion is also possible, but I suspect solar is more of a future as we have a perfectly decent fusion reactor out there already - the Sun - which bathes us already with all the energy we need.

USA Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico. South America Chile, Peru. Africa the Sahara and Namibian. Australia, Mongolia. A small part of these with a turbine solar farm would solve all human energy needs and not use semiconductors, so rare element mining not as severe.

Fusion may be useful for other purposes. We have yet to master most of the 4 forces of the Universe, we only really mastered electromagnetic force (conductance and valance bands). Fusion is mostly the weak nuclear force.

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Gen IV designs are intrinsically safe. Cooling continues to happen even in the case of a complete loss of power. And the fuel used eliminates the possibility of a runaway reaction. That is why I specifically referenced them.
https://k1project.columbia.edu/a15

The well known quote about fusion power; “fusion is the energy source of the future, and it always will be.” I look forward to its arrival, and get excited about it occasionally, but have stopped anticipating its imminent arrival.

Solar is great, but doesn’t match load demands or locations well. You mention hydrogen for storage and transport. Hydrogen is cheap to make, but challenging to handle and store (usually very cold, under high pressure, or both). So there are real issues to be solved there as well. The underground transportation tubes you mention are riskier and far more expensive to build than current gas / oil pipelines, and those already face many challenges. Other storage solutions have their own issues.

All that to say - I hope you are right and solar or fusion come along ASAP. But in the near future (next 50 years) I think our options for baseload power continues to be fossil fuels or nuclear fission. And of those two, I think fission is the better choice.

Partially agree.

The notion Fission is inherently safe is equivalent to saying their is a flaw in the design beyond the current ability of the designer to foresee. The ooops events 3-mile-island, Windscale, Chernobyl, Fukishima. Outside of nuclear such as disaster recovery I heard many times “we didn’t expect that”.

I agree Fission has a role for the foreseeable to complement wind, solar and give time for better non-fossil energy storage and transmission.

Fusion is inherently more efficient at scale, so a few large ones, so it has to solve the distribution issue, and storage as I can imagine them unreliable until “version 3”. Fusion complementing solar and wind I see being a thing for decades.

Fission is inherently less safe at scale so many smaller ones, so any accident at one “the wrong type of accident we never foresaw” is limited. Small fission reactors I see as inevitable.

Do we agree a sustained global effort, at least as great as the one to protect oil reserves, distribute, refine, store, would bear fruit and worthy of investment?

To the point of solar on cars - don’t think so, too small, inefficient.
To the point on semiconductors to make electricicity, it’s about 28% efficient now and is highly useful but it’s more a decentralised technology (on your roof!) and likely thermal solar (turbines) at a few large installations is my preference.
Fission. Man’s arrogance needs countering with keeping them small for humility to learn with least harm.
Energy storage - needs more of it. To cover the non-windy / darker days.
Fusion. In our lifetime, yes, but that’s been said for at least 1 lifetime. We only harnessed fusion in the Hydrogen bomb, fission makes fusion, and if that $$$ was spent on peaceful R&D sure we’d be a bit nearer reality.

THey have to be parked outside though.

I think we agree on most of it.

I’m more generally in favor of not subsidizing any of the energy sources, and see what comes, vs our current mix of heavy taxes combined with subsidies.