The conversation drifted into solar when I don’t believe anyone has proposed a solar electric passenger “jet,” but rather an electric one.
That aside, the fact remains that 42 foot motorhomes exist, wherein all “house” functions including air conditioning, heat, hot water, stove, microwave, refrigerator, multiple large screen LED televisions and computers are powered by solar alone, from panels installed upon the roof of the motorhome.
I’d love to have one, and have been researching it extensively due to having a classic old GMC motorhome basically fall into my lap very cheaply. As budget permits I’ll be switching to Danhard air conditioning, compressor refrigerator, etcetera in order to keep the power draw as low as possible and I’ll be putting about 1600 watts of solar panels on the roof. The GMC is challenging in that regard because of the (in my opinion beautiful) styling of it, more “fuselage” with no flat roof. But, with the Danhard type A/C the roof will be cleared of obstacles. I plan on a styled, enclosed “rack” system that deploys when camping, mimicking the visual mass of the A/C units and storage pod. That’ll keep it from getting ugly up there.
You'd definitely have to skimp on the air conditioner to make this work, and spend a whole lot of money on solar panels.
A 42-ft motorhome is usually 101" (8.42ft) wide, giving a roof area of 353.5 sq ft, or 32.84 sq meters. Let's stipulate that the roof extends up on one side by a 15º angle, which increases the roof area to 32.84 / cos(15º) = 34 square meters.
In my part of Alabama, we get 3 - 4 kWH per square meter per day in June. Let's say it's 4. The motorhome solar panel has 4 x 34 = 136 kwH per day of sun falling on it.
The highest efficiency solar panels I've found on the Internet, from Panasonic and Sunpower, claim 22.5% efficiency. Let's say the marketing hype is true. Then you can get 136 * 0.225 = 30.6 kWh per DAY. That doesn't include battery charging and discharge losses, which probably will take you down to about 80% of that, or about 24.5 kwH per day.
Ramsond says their 15000 BTU RV air conditioner requires 3.5 kW just to start up (say it takes 1 min to start up, so we've used 58 wH), and 1.5 kH to run. You can run the air conditioner, and only the air conditioner, for about 16 hours off the stored solar power.
It's going to be hot for the other 8 hours while you charge the batteries again.
This doesn't look very practical, and I've just calculated the A/C load.