Solar powered vehicles

17

October

2019

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At the moment of writing this blogpost the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is taking place. Which is an excellent time to take a look at solar powered vehicles which might be the next step in the car industry.

Currently it is impossible to develop a solar powered car that is competitive enough to compete with regular/electric cars. These solar powered cars are incredibly expensive, small, light and can only reach a speed of around 100 km/h. Also are current solar panels are not efficient enough, which makes them completely dependable on sunny weather (Wired, 2018). But as the demand for electric cars keeps increasing the question arises ‘Can they charge themselves in the future through solar panels?’.

Therefore we need to have an closer look into the solar panels of today. Currently the average solar panel on the roof of a house only converts 15-20% of the light that falls on them into electricity (Wired, 2018). Thus, current solar panels are basically not efficient at al even though they are already profitable. Henrik Fisker, a concurrent of Tesla, tried to make a regular car with these solar panels on it. This resulted in a car which generated around 200 watts of electricity per hour (Wired, 2018). Too bad electric vehicles need around 60 kilowatts per hour.  Which results in the Fisker only being able to drive one kilometre after eight hours of charging. Concluding, we are nowhere close to having fully solar powered cars.

Well time to give up then? NO, currently there are solar panels being produced which have an efficiency of at least 45% (Wired, 2018) and it is just a matter of time before this becomes 80-100% (Wired, 2018). As a result, electric vehicles can become less depended on being plugged-in. Even though the complexity might outweigh the benefits I believe it is a neat step in the right direction.

 

Source:

https://www.wired.com/story/solar-power-electric-cars/

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Remember Trump? He just made a surprising move…

16

September

2017

Trump just made a surprising move, did he change his mind about global warming?

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Did I just put use a picture of Trump to get more views? Maybe, but let’s not focus on that.

You’ll all probably heard Trump’s bold statements about global warming. Don’t know what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at one of his famous (of course) Tweets: “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” (Donald Trump 2013) .

However, he might have changed his mind about this as he just invested 62 million dollar in Concentrated Solar projects (James Temple 2017). Like me, you might not have the slightest idea what concentrated solar is about, so let’s start at the beginning.

Maybe I make a bold assumption here but I’m going to assume that you guys don’t think that global warming is just a faux invented by the Chinese. Please leave a comment if you think otherwise!

As we’re already seeing the effects of global warming it is important that we don’t aggravate it. That’s where Renewable Energy, identified by McKinsey as one of the twelve disrupting technologies, comes into place. McKinsey defines Renewable Energy as: Generation of electricity from renewable sources with reduced harmful climate impact. 

photovoltaic power plants

Well, where you might not have heard from concentrated solar, you might have heard from photovoltaic power plants. A photovoltaic power plant can be seen in the right.

However, a significant drawback of this technology is that it only works when the sun is out. Just as that windmills only work when there’s wind.

Concentrated solar solves just that problem. A concentrated solar power plant uses thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy and heat water to produce steam and generate electricity. As it is coupled with energy storage systems, such as heated molten-salt tanks, it can provide power even when the sun’s not shining (Richard Martin 2016).

To quote Trump again: “Eventually we’re going to get something done and it’s going to be really, really good.” Yes, it is out of context, but he might just have made the first step regarding global warming.

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