A Swedish manufacturer wants to harness green energy from a cargo trailer's free real estate.

Sweden is testing a semi-truck trailer covered in 100 square meters of solar panels::A Swedish manufacturer wants to harness green energy from a cargo trailer’s free real estate.

  • ElectricCattleman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    283·
    1 year ago

    Putting solar on moving vehicles makes no sense except for very specific use cases.

    Install those same panels on the ground and you can point them at a good angle for sunlight capture, don’t have to literally carry the weight of them everywhere, don’t have to worry about them getting dirty all the time from moving around winter roads, and are much easier to repair.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      Pretty sure these solar panels aren’t just your regular residential or commercial building panels. They are specially made for this purpose.

      • CaptPretentious@lemmy.worldEnglish
        62·
        1 year ago

        Those don’t exist.

        Amount of power that can be generated is dictated by the angle to the Sun. You need to be perpendicular. Panels on the ground can slowly move and rotate to kind of track the sun. Or you put a bunch of mirrors and make a tower made of solar panels.

        Solar panels on roof tend to be fixed infrastructure. You get what you get.

        So if they apply panels to a vehicle you have two options. Flat or angled.

        If they’re flat and the only time you’re ever going to get the maximum amount of power from them is during noon when the sun is directly above your vehicle. If angled that means the height of the vehicle has changed and they direction that they work is very dictated. If they track the Sun then they’re probably going to waste more power than they can ever produce by constantly moving because you’re on a vehicle that’s constantly moving.

        • GiddyGap@lemm.eeEnglish
          22·
          1 year ago

          Those don’t exist.

          No one said it does.

          Generally speaking, solar panels aren’t optimized for near-constant traveling. As such, it’s “fairly involved from a technical point of view,” said Falkgrim. Despite only recently starting prototype testing on Sweden’s public roads, he explained the project is “about seeing if the solution makes sense, and so far we believe it does.” Although such a design isn’t expected to become widespread on roadways for a few years, Scania’s initial testing shows the tech is not only feasible, but promising.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Those don’t exist.

            No one said it does.

            Pretty sure these solar panels aren’t just your regular residential or commercial building panels. They are specially made for this purpose.

            This you?

        • BakedGoods@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          24·
          1 year ago

          Ah yes. The old “this isn’t an optimal solution that will solve all problems so no one should be working on it”-argument. You must be fun at parties.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            Listen this isn’t mixing drinks or some opinion piece were there’s no one clear way. Things cost money. Every company that would seek to implement this is going to be looking at an ROI. Suboptimal numbers is going to make the project look bad and waste a bunch of money. Sorry if I’m ‘not fun’ because I’d rather have functional solar power than the appearance of solar power.