How much installed solar capacity is needed to completely power a 100% electric car ?
by admin on Friday, December 24th, 2010 | 3 Comments
Assuming the solar panels are not connected to the power grid, and assuming an average number of miles traveled per year (say 12,000), and without discussing battery, motor, range or other issues – but assuming it’s 100% electric (not a hybrid), and assuming plenty of sun location, how many watts of installed solar capacity is needed to power the car (visualize a pratical car like the EV1 – not like the “cars” they have in the World Solar Challenge race) w/o any other power source? Err on the side of a few too many watts rather than not enough.
Your car would not be big enough, and the DMV where you live would no doubt say NO to a contraption like that on the road. You are talking about, if I read your question correctly, a car that is solely powered by photo electric cells. If that is what you have in mind, then you are talking about at least 37 thousand watts, which would give you about 50 horse power. Remember, it takes 740 watts of electricity to equal 1 horse power. I don’t think you can get that many panels on a small car. Your best bet is a good battery bank, and an at home power source to recharge the batteries. What you might want to consider is a fuel cell powered electric vehicle.
Electric cars get 2-4 miles / kWh. A golfcart type will get more. An electric bicycle can get 100 mpkWh.
Okay, so lets say it gets 2 mpkWh. that’s 6000 kWh requirement per year. That can be supplied by a 3 kW array if you live where I do in California. Probably a somewhat smaller array in Phoenix, Arizona. What you can do is look up the average number of peak sun hours for your area on
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/
Let’s say the number you get is 5 hours per day. Multiply that by 360 days per year, and get 1800 hours per year. Then you would divide that into 6000 to get the size of your array, in kW.
Remember, this only powers the car, you would need more if you want to power your house, too.
Good luck!
For an all electric performance car to drive 1000 miles, it will consume 586 kWh of electricity. For 12,000 miles the power required will be 7032 kWhr.