Maybe an RV could be covered with solar? The top is much bigger, and if it isn’t charging fast enough you can always pull over and have lunch while the battery catches up.
Maybe an RV could be covered with solar? The top is much bigger, and if it isn’t charging fast enough you can always pull over and have lunch while the battery catches up.
But an RV is also way bigger and heavier.
RV panels make sense for the boondocking use case, where you want to charge computers or power a satellite internet terminal or something, but I can't imagine actually trying to drive on that trickle of juice.
Agreed. There’s an EV camper van with rooftop solar. IIRC it gets about 1000W peak, which isn’t bad for the home batteries but is basically nothing for the high voltage drive system
How about charging your house batteries, which power fans and lights and perhaps cooking and A/C? This kind of solar setup can be rather cheap and quite effective.
Yes, that's what I'm meaning. AIUI off-grid camping tends to be more limited by the drinking water supply more than electricity, but if collecting solar power lets you avoid running the generator quite as often, that sounds like a win.
This and you could also charge an ebike
Boats have been doing this for ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmbH-TAM2Wk&list=PLQp8FoQ4t-...
It’s always going to be anecdotal. I reckon a mid size RV (say upper class B) will have 1500-2000W of solar capacity, if it’s really boxy. It’s going to have the aerodynamics of a brick. Meaning you’ll be lucky to get 1mi/kwh at highway speed, maybe 2~2.5 if you keep under 30.
So you’ll be charging at 2~5mi/h, if the sun is shining straight overhead.
It’ll count for something if you park the RV in the sun for a week as you camp somewhere, but on the road it gives you some limping ability and that’s about it. The main benefit is not running the AC off of the engine.
It doesn't make sense to power any vehicle with onboard solar. There are no electric RVs yet because the batteries required to have any amount of range are cost prohibitive and heavy.
I put 1800W on my RV and that's covering the roof end to end. I'd guess it'd be enough for something like 1-2 miles a day on an electric drive train, assuming you don't use power for anything else.
> I'd guess it'd be enough for something like 1-2 miles a day on an electric drive train
It's probably more 10~20, possibly as much as 30, if it's a long and sunny summer day FWIW.
For references:
- the F150 lightning gets close to 2 miles / kWh on average, ~1.5 at highway speeds but as much as 3~4 at consistent low speeds
- on the other side of an RV, Volvo markets their FH Electric (cabover semi) for 1.1kWh/km — 0.7 mi/kWh — at 80km/h (50mph), DAF/Innovate UK's Battery Electric Truck Trial yielded similar results (1.08kWh/km over 287000 km), it's also close to the numbers of the electric trucker in their very recent MAN eGTX video (0.83 kWh/km = 0.75 mi/kWh)
Who lunches for several days/weeks? logically you would charge high speed through a plug with energy generated by panels that are much more efficiëntly (money+yield) placed and not have to carry around.
People are absolutely starting to populate their RVs with solar. What I've seen so far is just a few panels - around 600 watts. Usually connected to a battery separated from the RV wiring.
Even better to get a fixed structure such as a garage or carport, that keeps the vehicle safe and out of the sun, and cover that in Solar.
It has larger surface area, doesn't weight the vehicle down at all even if it's built in a less weight-efficient way, and the vehicle doesn't need to be exposed to the elements.