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Solar panel calculations
I'm making a solar car with motor of 48V, 1250W that has a peak current rating of 60A. What specs of solar panel should be used to run the motor directly using panel for 30min?
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I guess the first question I have is, will you be running this car only in the day time during the hours of 10Am to 2PM?
The second question is, do you feel that there is any chance the panels could get even a little shade or shadow while it is running?
With out direct unblocked (even a little) sunlight the solar panels will stop working and if the sun is not shining directly down on the panels they will not produce anywhere close to their nameplate wattage.
Basically it would be very hard to run a load directly from solar panels that is moving around and not pointing the panels directly at the sun at all times. -
ha, ha, ha, you're gonna need at least 3kW of PV or 12 panels which is about 200 sq ft or about 20 sq meters - better known as a lot of extra weight and drag on your car. How big is your car? The facts of life are that cars take a hell of a lot of power to push them down the road and you can't get enough solar on them to do it. Bow down and worship the concentrated miracle of liquid fuel....BSEE, R11, NABCEP, Chevy BoltEV, >3000kW installedComment
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A better solution would be to install a battery in that car to run it and use a fixed point charging system. That could be either grid power or solar.Comment
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It really doesn't matter if the vehicle needs to go 40 mt or 400 mt. You will probably need about 3000 watts of panels to run a 1250watt 48v motor. How big is this car?
The cars I have seen in the Solar competitions by Universities use much smaller motors, are built to be very light weight and are big enough just to hold a single driver that is usually laying down or near prone to keep the car's profile low and aerodynamic.Comment
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It still comes down to physics and electrical requirements. To run a motor that is rated over 1000 watts directly from solar panels may require panel wattage of 2000 to 3000 watts just to over come the inertia of moving the car.
You might get a motor to rotate using a lot less panel wattage but it still comes down to what the BLDC motor requires to start moving and to push a vehicle. At 1250 watts I would say it will be more than a few multi-hundred watt solar panels. Will that many fit on the car without producing any drag?Comment
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A solar panel rated about 300 watts has a voltage rating about ~ Vmp = 32v and a current rating of ~ Imp = 9.5Amps.
So to generate over 48v at even 30amp requires about 6 of those 300 watt panels wired in 3 sets of 2 to generate 60vDC and about 30 A. That may be able to start your motor or maybe not.Comment
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The weight of a 1.5kw solar pv system will vary based on the type of panel (60 cell vs 72 cell) as well as the type of frame work. I would think there is a weigh difference between a mono crystal panel and a thin film type of the same wattage but the majority of the weight is probably in the framing.
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Well there isn't any solar panel rated 750watt or even 500 watt on the commercial market. You would have to build a system yourself that can generate both the voltage and amp required to turn that motor.
Actually that is what those experimental cars I talked about earlier. They all have their surface covered in solar cells that I would imagine generate what is needed to run the motor.
You might try to experiment with manufactured panels to see how much wattage you need to turn the motor and then work up to see how much wattage is needed to move the car.Comment
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Any size you want silly. Does not matter because it will not be enough. You will have to use commercial power to charge the batteries. If you do not use commercial power your batteries will be destroyed in a month.
But to answer your question it will take a 5000 watt panel to run the motor. Good luck with that. Your golf cart will be so big and heavy with so much wind drag, your cart will not be able to move under its own power unless you are going down wind and down hill.
LMAOLast edited by Sunking; 10-19-2016, 01:52 PM.MSEE, PEComment
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