Hanergy launches full solar power vehicles that can be commercialized

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.hanergy.com/en/content/details_37_3602.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Hanergy launches full solar power vehicles that can be commercialized[/font]

Published：2016-07-03

[font size=3] Beijing, July 2 -Hanergy Holding Group, the world’s leading thin-film solar power company, launched four full solar power vehicles at a grand ceremony themed “Disruptive Innovations Drive the Future” outside its headquarters in Beijing on July 2. Over 4,000 guests from all sectors of society attended the event.



A sports car named “Hanergy Solar R” made its debut as Li Hejun, Board Chairman and CEO of Hanergy Holding Group, drove it around the venue in the spotlight. In his speech, Mr. Li elaborated on the advantages of thin-film solar cells such as light weight and flexibility, enabling the cells to be integrated into a variety of products such as cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, mobiles, backpacks and clothes. The full solar power vehicles making their debut showcase the latest achievements of Hanergy’s mobile energy strategy, he said.

Integrated with flexible and highly efficient thin-film solar cells and modules, the full solar power vehicles with zero emissions use solar energy as its main source of driving force through a series of precise control and managing systems, including a photoelectric conversion system, an energy storage system and an intelligent control system.

As Hanergy’s full solar power vehicles acquire power directly from the sun, they do not depend on charging posts and thus have no need to bother with “distance per charge” anymore, making “zero charging” possible during medium and short distance journeys. Breaking the bottleneck of poor practicality of previous solar-powered vehicles, the four launched by Hanergy are the first full thin-film solar power vehicles that can be commercialized, redefining new energy vehicles.

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OK, color me skeptical…

[larkrake]

1. cool, it can only get better from here out

[Kelvin Mace]

2. Very skeptical that it is workable

Back of the envelope calculations making very generous assumptions:

3 square meters of surface area with 20% efficiency means 600 watts of power per hour (1000 watts x 0.2)x3

Assume 7 hours of maximum sunlight a day (you live in Arizona) and you are looking at 4200 watts generated in that time, or 4.2 kWhs of electricity. My Nissan Leaf gets about 3.5 miles per kWh, so that much power will propel me 14.7 miles. At 4.2 kWhs per day it would take almost six days to fully charge my Leaf's 24kWh battery.

I don't see this as a useful car.

[PoliticAverse]

3. This Forbes.com article has additional details, note the claim...

Thirdly, and most interesting, the surface of the solar panels can be extended when the vehicle is stopped to allow for faster charging. There are two ways this can be done: by temporarily using the windows as extra panels or by folding out the roof-based solar panels, in true space-station style. In this way the panels of the Hanergy Solar A can be extended to 7.5 square meters, allowing a full solar charge in six hours.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tychodefeijter/2016/07/04/hanergy-launches-solar-powered-cars-in-china/2/

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Okay,

7.5 x 200 watts is 1500 watts, or 9 kWhs after six hours, enough for 31 miles and charge. But again, that is assuming full sun, 20% efficient pvs, and perfect angling for the sun. That is a lot of assumptions of things working optimally, which rarely happens in the real world.

Using cheaper 15% panels with intermittent clouds and less than optimal positioning and you easiy cut the numbers a third to a half, to 1/10th on a rainy day.

Also, imagine a car in a regular parking lot with all those panels pulled out taking up two or more parking spaces to the annoyance of other drivers. Again, sounds great in theory, but practice is something else.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. FWIW: They also include the capacity to be plugged in.

In any case, we’re not talking about actual, shipping products yet.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. The Prius in Japan

has a PV on the roof. The Leaf has a small PV which charges the 12v battery, which handles power for the instrumentation. Now, the idea of simply adding PVs to the car to produce power as a supplementary charging source is not a bad idea, but still has to pass crash tests in the U.S. before it will be allowed.

Some folks are experimenting with PVs on buses, which works a lot better because of the greater surface area.

We need a crash program to create incentives for folks to switch to EVs, which would then drive wind and solar installation, and make better use of current "off peak" power than is pretty much wasted at the moment.

20 years ago I suggested that we should change the building code so that any new building/house was required to generate 5% of it's own power using renewable energy. The requirement would then increase 2.5% every five years after that until all new construction was self-sustaining.

Of course, such "unicorns and ponies" type thinking was considered laughable and too expensive (and vile Communism/Socialism), despite the fact that it was technologically feasible, and would have added maybe 5% to the cost of building. So, instead of having houses today that generate 15% of their own power, we are stuck in the 20th century, burning fossil fuels to generate heat and electricity.

[mopinko]

7. add this capacity to an ev, and you got me.

i would like to drive a tesla, but i dont have a garage to charge it. i do have a parking space, but...

i dont like the idea of possibly being stranded far from a charging station. i know they are popping up fast, but still. i have been saying for a long time that what ev's need is some emergency power. w such short travel capacity, it makes it inconvenient for long trips. but some juice coming in as you go would make that a lot better.
i dont get why tesla is not all over this.

[caraher]

8. Kelvin points out the basic problem here

Sunlight just isn't very power-intensive... the footprint of a car is just not large enough to power vehicles with the kind of performance people expect in a car.

We can adjust expectations... to some degree. But the notion that we can ever just hop into a vehicle power only by solar panels on its surface and tool around as we do today in conventional cars can only be maintained by not understanding the basics of energy and power involves.

To get a better sense of what kind of performance one could expect from a "pure solar" car, read about any of the many solar car competitions. You're talking one-passenger, zero cargo, bicycle-like construction, and the chief factors in winning those races are sophisticated weather forecasting and race strategies.

[PoliticAverse]

9. Yes it takes a certain amount of energy to push a car through air resistance...

and the energy from the sun falling on a standard sized car tends to be less than
required to do that.

A discussion with some numbers:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/a-solar-powered-car/

[caraher]

10. There's a lot of good stuff on Tom's blog