> If you cover a curved surface with solar panels you can approximate solar tracking in terms of power per given footprint. ???? By approximate you mean lose

> If you cover a curved surface with solar panels you can approximate solar tracking in terms of power per given footprint. ???? By approximate you mean lose signifcant energy? A car is a closed manifold. Take the area it casts a shadow on - that is the area a solar tracker would get ~100% of the sun's flux. A general closed manifold (which is prefect for a car since the car and sun will move) will get ~50% of that energy. That's pretty massive. A simple way to compute exactly 50% loss is for the area of a shadow from a sphere - a tracking disk with that area would get pi * r^2 of the energy. A sphere with the same shadow would get 50% of that (set up, integrate). Do you even check these claims? Of course you'll fixate on a sphere vs a car, but make any closed manifold, let the sun move throughout the day, and you will end up with pretty much the same result (via theorems on total curvatures on closed manifolds stuff).