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To: terycarl
until they can put a solar collector, the size of a sunroof, on top of my car,

Well, let's say you live in an ideal location in the middle of the desert. We'll make the panel a bit bigger, 1 meter by 1 meter. You will get 7 kWh per day of solar energy. Let's assume there is 25% efficiency (very optimistic considering today's technology and your panel won't be aimed at the sun). Now you have less than 2kWh of energy per day to work with.

Now let's look at gasoline, it contains 33 kWh of raw energy per gallon. The engine is about 20% efficient and 10-15% after adding drive train and other sources of friction. That means 3kWh of energy to move your car forward from each gallon.

So the equivalent energy of 2/3 gallon of gasoline is collected by parking the car in full sun for a day. So figure on a 20 mile round trip per day and that's using lots of ideal assumptions. Oh and your idea of using battery for only 5%, forget about that, it will be more like 95% from battery.

32 posted on 12/21/2011 4:10:34 AM PST by palmer (Before reading this post, please send me $2.50)
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To: palmer
Well, let's say you live in an ideal location in the middle of the desert. We'll make the panel a bit bigger, 1 meter by 1 meter. You will get 7 kWh per day of solar energy. Let's assume there is 25% efficiency (very optimistic considering today's technology and your panel won't be aimed at the sun). Now you have less than 2kWh of energy per day to work with.

you'll notice that I pooh-poohed the entire notion and said that until and unless they can come up with a miniature collector that will provide this power, I wasn't interested at all. Someday in the distant future, such technology will probably be possible, but for the time being, I want this gov't to get the hell out of the way of people who want to drill for OIL!!

33 posted on 12/21/2011 12:53:17 PM PST by terycarl (lurking, but well informed)
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