Solar Bike

[itselectric]

We had the opportunity to work on this project. There have been many members who have done similar project, generally involve with a car battery and inverter. The customer came to us wanted a lightweight solar bike to be mounted onto a Bob Trailer. We initially rejected the project, mainly we are not expert in solar panel, and we didn’t think it will works. After a few convincing from the customer, we partner up with a local renewable energy wholesaler. With their help, they spec out the solar panel and did some modification to the charger, now we have lightweight solar panel bike trailer. There were a few things that are special on this project:

The requirement is try to fit the solar panel onto the BobTrailer (limited size of the panel)

We did not use car battery as a storage device (lighter weight), and we modified the lithium battery charger to accept solar panel as the power source, directly charge the battery from the panel.

In order to hook up to a Bob Trailer, we have a custom made Bob Trailer adapter

The charger is 42Volt, 2AMP. We use lithium polymer battery 37v, 10.5Ah. The battery will take 5 hour at 2amp to be fully charge. The solar panel generates 500mA. In theory, if you go to work and park the solar bike/trailer outside in a sunny day for 10 hour, you will be able recover very close to 50% of the charge.
Here are some of picture.

SolarBike [800x600].JPG (109.18 KiB) Viewed 931 times

Solarbike-SV [800x600].JPG (96.18 KiB) Viewed 819 times

Here is the modified charger:

DSC06865 [800x600].JPG (76.34 KiB) Viewed 933 times

DSC06869 [800x600].JPG (55.53 KiB) Viewed 930 times

DSC06866 [800x600].JPG (70.88 KiB) Viewed 933 times

Here is the youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk9GcG9EJzA



___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/powerinmotion
Website : http://us.itselectric.ca

[liveforphysics]

Very cool project!