What do you guys thing of parking lots with nice roofs over the cars to provide shade.... and photovoltaic panels on top to provide some power to help "refuel" the electric cars.
Let's think about it a moment... a car's parking spot takes about 2mx5m (maybe it's a bit more in 'murica), that's 10m^2 of overhead solar panels... under optimum conditions we get 500W/m^2 of sun power... considering weather, inclination and latitude, we can play with about 200W/m^2 on average.
Then factor in the 10% efficiency of solar panels and we get, per parking spot, 200W.
The average person leaves the car parked while they're working for about 8 hours, so we're looking at 1600Wh of power delivered from the sun to your battery, free of charge....
1.6kWh isn't much...
Just for comparison, the car's battery will have, at least, 25kWh capacity... so the sun will be providing about 5% of the total recharging requirements.
It isn't much, but it certainly is something.
5% less in your yearly electricity bill is something noticeable.
But then you have the solar panel investment cost and maintenance costs... that may tun the project to the ground...
Let's think about it a moment... a car's parking spot takes about 2mx5m (maybe it's a bit more in 'murica), that's 10m^2 of overhead solar panels... under optimum conditions we get 500W/m^2 of sun power... considering weather, inclination and latitude, we can play with about 200W/m^2 on average.
Then factor in the 10% efficiency of solar panels and we get, per parking spot, 200W.
The average person leaves the car parked while they're working for about 8 hours, so we're looking at 1600Wh of power delivered from the sun to your battery, free of charge....
1.6kWh isn't much...
Just for comparison, the car's battery will have, at least, 25kWh capacity... so the sun will be providing about 5% of the total recharging requirements.
It isn't much, but it certainly is something.
5% less in your yearly electricity bill is something noticeable.
But then you have the solar panel investment cost and maintenance costs... that may tun the project to the ground...
