Comment by reactordev
11 hours ago
You would be consuming fossil fuels to charge a ship when the sun is giving you energy for free.
At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
11 hours ago
You would be consuming fossil fuels to charge a ship when the sun is giving you energy for free.
At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
The energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc.
I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
That may all be true, but there are other benefits that could make it worth it. For example it could be, in theory, self-sufficient forever if something else breaks down making it unable to maneuver. Then you can at least sit in the middle of the sea and have your heating and cooking and desalination working until you repair the propulsion.
You already have MWh of batteries for that.
1 reply →
I sailed around the world on a sailboat with solar. I know. It’s still better than none at all.
The energy is free. To capture it costs a little bit of money.
There’s something funny to me about taking your experience with solar on a small sailboat and extrapolating this to a commercial ferry that would need a very large solar installation that’s funny to me. Something tells me the experience isn’t transferable.
7 replies →
Read again. I said you can put the panels on land where it is 100x easier and cheaper to install them vs on a ship. Solar panels are not fossil fuel.
Why don’t electric cars and trucks have solar panels then?
Oh you mean like the Aptera or the Hyundai Ioniq 5? They do have solar panels built in. Prius Prime as well. These aren’t powerful enough to charge the main drive though, not enough surface area and voltage.
But why not put it on a Tesla if it will be so much more efficient than putting the same panels on your roof of your house and charge your Tesla with that?
5 replies →
The Aptera vehicle is vapourware and likely always will be. It's not a practical vehicle that is on sale.
Solar roof on Ioniq 5 and Prius is an option, not standard. And it's rare. In fact, I've never seen it or even heard of it until I looked up what you were saying. And for the Ioniq 5 solar roof, it seems that it's not even offered at all in some countries.
The Prius one is "Offered as an option on the range-topping XSE Premium trim". Far from standard. This roof literally adds up to 4 of miles of range on a good day. (1) So it's a high-end gimmick that has niche use at best on a car, when compared to a fixed solar / battery installation situated where the car is parked.
It won't be any more useful on a boat.
1) https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/13w5cb1/o...
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