All of the above beat using coal or gas to generate electricity.

Sounds like a little ECST could be an option (g).
Be well,
Tag
PS ECS=Electro-convulsive Shock Treatment.

You leave work and get into your car. It’s now like 120 degrees inside. So you roll down the windows and blast the air conditioning until the vehicle is cool.

Versus…

You walk out and a solar panel has been running a small blower fan to blow out the super-heated air. Or a larger unit has continuously run the air conditioner.

Mind you, I just had a recent use of this sort of thing. Driving cross country in my Prius. We’d take a couple one to three hour naps. However, it was hot! So we’d leave the Prius running with the air conditioning for 2-3 hours.

Guess what, the Prius kept the car interior cool. Periodically activating the air conditioner. And occaisionally it would turn on the engine to re-charge. This is not something I could have done in an normal car. I’d have had to have the engine running (using up lots of gas and emitting lots of CO2) the entire time in order to run the air conditioning. Or I’d have turned it off and sweated like a pig.

So I see the potential for such a concept as quite real. Albeit, not fully realized yet by most proponents and opponents alike.

- The Saj

It’s an option that will sell like pink Cadillacs.

When I was an undergraduate in the 1970s they were talking about mass production and increased efficiency of solar cells; they’re still talking.
Anyhow, the new batteries do promise to make solar cells more viable since we may finally have a good way to capture the energy for when it’s needed.

Thanks for the links. All worked except the copied one. Good information supporting the hydrogen hoax theory.

Go GM and Go Volt;.

My roof (not a particularly big house) has enough area to support 5KW more more… enough to run up to 5 hairdryers. At once. And, since we use our one hairdryer for less than 10 minutes a day, that’s 5KW, continuous for several hours, going into other things.

5KW could, in two hours, recharge a Volt. If you look at the EVNut.com site, you will find dozens of Rav4-EV owners who have SPV installed on their homes.

#110, Jackson,

I think BMW is actively pursuing that.

http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/9997

This is not for Solar, it’s for Thermoelectric generators. A third of the heat from an internal combustion engine goes down the tailpipe. The difference in temp between exhaust gas and cooling system water can be over 100 degrees Celcius; which ought to be fine for solid-state TG cells to provide an extra kilowatt.

A few watts here, a few watts there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real power!

Mazda Motor Corp briefly offered a solar panel option on two car models, the Eunos 800 and Sentia, in the early 1990s to ventilate the sedans while parked on hot summer days. The expensive option was unpopular and discontinued after a few years.

Kentaro Endo, a director at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry who specializes in renewable energy, said the application of solar energy was severely limited in vehicles.

“Even if you laid solar panels out on the entire roof of a house, you only generate enough energy to run two hair dryers,” he said.

“It’s an interesting idea, but it would be very difficult to power a whole car, even with technological advances.”

…to summarize; not a new idea, not a good idea!