Solar powered cruiser - up to 6kts on solar power so they sez

[Figmental]

http://dsehybrid.com/index.html Pretty neat with the price of fuel!

[Aaric7546]

Artists make decisions using the right side of their brain while engineers tend to be more left-brain thinkers. I believe it is a balance between left and right that allow us to make the best decisions while racing sailboats.
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Solar Power

[wizbang 13]

Could they put that on an uglier boat?

[willmarsh3]

A recent WB has an article about "Sparky" (IIRC) that gets about 1/4 of its propulsion energy from the solar panels.

[Breakaway]

I wonder what the glare off the solar panel on the trunk is like when you're at the helm trying to see!

Kevin

[Dan McCosh]

There was a solar-powered car race a couple of years ago, and one of the teams discovered that if you mounted the panels vertically, they would act like a sail, and the car went faster then it did under the power from the solar panels. The had to re-write the rules after that.

[ahp]

Did the article say 860 square feet of solar panels? If the sun were straight over head ( noon on the equator) the power in the sun light is 75 watts per square foot times 860, and the efficiency of solar panels is at best about 15%. So that works out to be 9675 watts, and 1.0 hp is 746 watts hence the panels when the sun overhead would deliver about 13 hp. Would 13 hp drive that boat at 6 knots?

If one assumes only a 10% use factor, 10 hours in the sun to charge the battery bank for every hour underway, then one could realize 130 hp. Might work.

I am not impressed.