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That's good information for the "typical panel which is about 20% efficient when directly facing the sun." I'd be much more interested in what is possible using the current state of the art equipment in good conditions. Can you provide that for us 3 prius mike?

 

Take your pick from this chart:

https://www.nrel.gov/pv/assets/pdfs/best-research-cell-efficiencies.pdf

 

That's not quite what I asked about. Usually, if you denigrate a design it's because the design has specific faults. If Mike knows of the specific faults that make that design flawed, the rest of us can "stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us" if he gives us a quick description of the failure so we can jump off from there.

 

That’s a trip down memory lane. I remember in the early internet days the only reasonable and affordable way to get panels was to buy derelict ARCO panels that were being tore down en masse at the time for salvage.

only a couple websites had cheap volumes of panels that were unbelievably expensive to ship.

 

The best available supposedly was lightyear one, which from their 2022 press release was approximately 5 square meters and had a peak of 1 kw. Note the body shaped panels were likely much more efficient than 20% but following the curves of the body lowered peak production. In ideal conditions they could provide 6kwh/day according to the company. I don't even know how they got that large area. These were very expensive, which led to the canceling production. The company is still in business but trying to sell panels to other auto manufacturers, and perhaps making a less expensive vehicle. I'm sure they are concentrating on lowering production costs, not increasing efficiency right now.

They do have foldable panels, so I suppose you could unfold when parked if your spot was big enough say 6 meters by 5 meters (or around 18'x15'). Still this is an expensive proposition unless you don't move your vehicle much.

In most cases a bigger battery is cheaper, depending on your travel plans.

 

That chart tells you the current 'state of the art' efficiencies of all the PV chemistries currently in use or development. From it, you can compute the minimum size of a proposed towed collection array.

 

I assume you want to cover your car with solar panels.

IMO, just a dumb idea. Put the panels on your roof where you can collect the maximum amount from them everyday for 25 or 30 years, not on a car where they will be shaded lots of the time, at the wrong angle lots of the time and possibly get totalled in a wreck and will certainly not last on a car for 25 or 30 years.
Once all the rooftops, parking lots, etc are covered then we can think about cars and maybe we will have cheaper solar panels with higher efficiency

Mike

 

^^ ++

PV panels mounted on a rooftop have a far higher utilization factor than any mounted on a car: better average pointing direction, less shading from trees or adjacent buildings, never any shading from a garage roof, no continual energy expenditure hauling them around, longer life expectancy, and almost never ceasing production just because the 'battery' they feed (i.e. the grid) is too full to accept any more charge.

Mobile PV for propulsion is not yet a good use of one's resources, when there is still plenty of much lower hanging fruit available.

Someday, mobile PV may make sense. But today, we get a lot more energy return by attaching that PV to a building or other fixed location, using it to charge a plug-in car battery when available, then having it continue harvesting energy to feed into 'the grid' all the rest of the time. A lot more return for the same buck.