Three Solar-Powered Cars Show a Possible Tech Path for Airplanes

Dean Sigler Batteries, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

In the next decade, your new car may not only be electric or hybrid, but solar powered.  A speaker from an Italian auto firm told a symposium your editor attended five years ago that solar roofs on cars could provide up to 30 free kilometers for an electric car each day.  That 18 miles would be a gift indeed, but at least three innovators are working toward making that an underachievement. Sono Motors and their Sion Sono Motors, headquartered in Munich, Germany, used crowdfunding to build their prototype and publicize their five-seat, partially solar powered vehicle – Sion.  Sion comprises several surprising elements, including polycarbonate shielded solar cells integrated into the simple, wedge-shaped body design, an interior air-cleaning system based on living plants, and an ingenious group of communications and charging systems. To keep the cost within the 16,000 euros promised in their fundraising campaign, the designers left out the 30 kilowatt battery, good for 250 kilometers (155 miles).  This …

Solar Cells Collect More Light, Display Art

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Friend and frequent contributor Colin Rush sent this Economist item about Semprius, a concentrating solar cell maker about to go into production with their highly efficient technology. It’s big news that a production solar panel is able to convert 42.5 percent of sunlight falling on it into energy, when the world’s record for any solar cell was set last September by the German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems with an experimental multi-junction solar cell that’s 44.7 percent efficient.  The 42.5 percent for Semprius cells drops to about 35 percent when they are surrounded by the normal mounting flanges and connecting lines – still well above most production panels. These may achieve 50 percent with suitable refinement. Using breakthroughs devised by John Rogers of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Semprius is able to mass produce these four cells stacked on top of one another and deploy them in the field. The Economist explains that, “Solar cells are made of semiconductors, …