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Off topic but...Power from solar cells is DC; to the extent these are locally supplying vehicle power you can just cut out the 2-way AC conversion, no? I have
by hodgesrm 9y ago
Off topic but...Power from solar cells is DC; to the extent these are locally supplying vehicle power you can just cut out the 2-way AC conversion, no?
I have this picture that eventually all parking structures will be fitted with solar power to charge parked vehicles. (Roads would be even better, of course.)
- jbms 9y agoYes, but the voltage needs boosted up to 300 or 400V, so there's still a DC-DC conversion step + control to ensure the correct current at each range.
- vurpo 9y agoAs EEVBlog has shown many times, road surfaces are an extremely impractical place to put solar panels on. It needs to be kept clean to work efficiently, and you also need to make a surface with similar friction properties as asphalt, which is not easy when it needs to be transparent and durable enough to take cars and trucks driving over it constantly. Of course if you meant something like panels on the side of the road, or roofs, or something like that then that's fine, those installations would just be pretty standard solar panel installations. But covering the road surface itself is just a bad idea that would require a significant engineering effort and massive cost to work to any degree at all.
- Retric 9y agoThe backup is to simply add a structure over your roads and put solar on that. But, IMO that's just an implementation detail. We have plenty of land for all the solar power we need any time soon without impacting farming.