On Sep 22, 2015, at 1:52 PM, Lee Hart <[email protected]> wrote:
> Ben Goren via EV wrote: > >> Not just current state of the art...it's never going to be practical >> for the four-door five-passenger freeway sedan that dominates the >> roadways; there just isn't enough insolation. > > I agree for normal cars. But I have to wonder... what about railroad cars? Now that's a _very_ interesting thought! One would have to run the numbers, of course, which shouldn't be too difficult: box car surface area, assume panels laid flat on top and average US insolation. Locomotive fuel consumption per mile should be easy to find. If the math works, it should be straightforward to retrofit...the locomotives are already electric vehicles with diesel generators providing the electricity. Add a battery car, charge the batteries from the panels, run the electric motor from the batteries, and keep the diesel generator to top off the batteries if they ever run low. I'd think the biggest technical challenge would be routing that much power from car to car...every car would have to be able to carry the full current of the maximum output from the panels, over a connection that can be made and disconnected at random times, quickly and safely -- and with automatic shutdown / disconnect in case of derailment or other emergency. I bet that wouldn't be easy to design nor cheap to implement. ...but, alas, a significant fraction of rail transport is moving fossil fuels around the country, and something tells me that the rail owners would get upset at the "optics" of a solar-powered train hauling coal or tar sands crude. If solar is what's best for the trains moving the dirty stuff, why bother with the dirty stuff in the first place, and why not just go solar everywhere? Don't hold your breath, in other words. b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150922/769ad3da/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
