Endless Sphere

Thanks -- this has been *very* useful information and will save me from multiple trips down the wrong rabbit holes. I can't begin to express the real gratitude I feel for the amount of your time and hard work that you're willing to share with total strangers like me. If your travels ever take you t...

I agree that using your design as a "starting point" is likely the wisest approach, since my foot/pedal clearances might just be sufficiently different. Having an actual printed piece would allow me to get more accurate dimensions, and would be an easy way to produce a prototype. Sounds good to me....

Thanks for the great advice -- the arrows you've taken in your back are definitely making life easier for those of us who are following in your footsteps. Hang on a sec... If I'm in the front, you're following in my footsteps and the arrows are in my back, who is doing the shooting? Unfortunately, ...

It will take a while to digest all of the data in your magnificent post, but I think you've definitely earned a place in the history books for this achievement. I appreciate the sentiment but I've managed to remain humble by remembering that the solar bike record is held by 2018 SunTrip participant...

A deadline has a wonderful way of focusing the mind. I got my custom encapsulated solar panels in August of 2018 and kept putting off the irreversible final step of bonding them to my new nearly-finished trailer until two weeks ago. Some of it was about wanting higher confidence that I hadn't overlo...

Indeed, even if you went to 20 degree adjustments you'd see almost no change in harvested power. Sure, for some definition of acceptable loss. At 20° error, the loss is around 6% which kind of defeats the point of having automated sun tracking. Admittedly, the tracking is more of an interesting exe...

Here's a short time lapse of the sun tracking while the bike is stationary. I'm looking forward to doing these in more scenic locations in the future. 5p6qLDJF6zQ Eliminating the clutch will reduce the backlash which means I could do smaller, more precise angle adjustments but having the sun's rays ...

solarEbike, wow it looks awesome. Thanks for sharing. Hello and welcome to the forum. Thanks for creating an account just to leave a kind comment here. the total solar Wh was 10% higher than the model predicted. Either my model inputs are too conservative or the perfect cloudless day had more insol...

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've done several test rides with the handlebar mounted potentiometer to limit the maximum tilt angle and it appears to be quite effective in terms of giving me fine manual control of the wind profile on the fly. I don't mind having to fiddle with it for now since it'...

Final assembly of the trailer panels is proceeding apace. Tab wires and Kapton tape on the back of the panel for bypass diodes. 48D9EA8A-8DC0-4616-839C-5AEF317DF177.jpg Epoxy potting compound candy-coating to keep them dry. This stuff takes 4 days to fully cure at room temperature or two hours at ov...

I wasn't expecting this much trouble with wind because the previous single wheel trailer (almost) never had this problem. This version is 26% lighter, has 7% more surface area, tilts to 85° from horizontal instead of 45°and is a little higher off the ground for more suspension travel. Each of these ...

Right after completing my 139 mile trip, I started planning what will hopefully be my first double century ride (200 miles, "triple metric century+"??). The target date is June 20, given or take a couple of days so I can cherry-pick optimal weather conditions. Not only is it another bucket list item...

I think I solved the mystery of why the bypass diodes appear to work intermittently. It has more to do with the very low breakdown voltage of SunPower cells and the way they interact with the Genasun MPP tracking algorithm. I got similar results with a conventional bypass diode and the Texas Instrum...

john61ct wrote: ↑

May 19 2020 10:06pm

Solution for partial shade impact mitigation:

one SC per panel, full stop.

I already have 3 solar charge controllers for 4 panels. As soon as one or two cells are shaded, I lose the whole panel. This is a way to get back 30-140 watts.

But these particular panels aren't really worth the weight of carrying them on the trike (at least, not the generic (possibly harbor-freight) ones, that I have three of). Definitely not. Thin film is around half the efficiency of traditional crystalline silicon so twice the surface are and twice th...

Fast forward to today and we have "active diode" or "smart diode" devices like this Texas Instruments SM74611. It's not small enough to encapsulate within the cell but the cost ($3-4), forward voltage (26 mV) and reverse leakage current (3 µA) make it feasible to put one for every 4 or 8 cells. Not...

Hope you feel better soon. Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that my explanation makes it difficult to see the bigger picture. This chart might help make it clearer why the voltage range of these (or any other) solar panels is unsuitable for direct connection to a lithium battery. The Vmp i...

PS: A 250 watt solar panel in Phoenix, Arizona with 90% charge controller efficiency and 10% shading losses would average the following watt-hours per day. ( source ) Phoenix-250w-panel.png You guys get some serious sun. There's a reason the U.S. Global Horizontal Irradiance map looks like this: US-...

Maximum Power Pmax 15w +/-5w ... (unreadable) AM1.5.10000W/M2 It's +/- 5 % (+/-5W would be huge on a 15W panel). The unreadable part is "Standard Test Conditions" or STC and refers to the conditions at which all the voltage and current are measured. They're temperature and irradiance dependent, res...

...including this one short stretch which was paved with carpet remnants (seriously?) Carpet remnants, if large enough, are MUCH better than mud... I figured it was something like that. It was just so unexpected to find in the middle of nowhere. One moment I'm on a paved bike path and suddenly it's...

I'll be building a cargo trike - tadpole configuration. Ideally I'd like to have a removable awning framework to support solar panels for recharging either while riding or when parked for when I'm using the trike for extended trips. Most of the around town trips can be covered by my current battery...

Coronavirus Diary. Week 8 of lockdown. Cabin fever. Riding about 150 miles (240 km) per week but getting bored with the same loop over and over again. Outdoor exercise, including bike riding, is permitted in the SF Bay Area but non-essential travel is not. Scouring Google Maps for fresh ideas, I spo...

In my opinion your panels that you will use on your trip are perfectly fine at the moment. Agreed. I'm a little disappointed because I had expected slightly higher output. I'll need to add module degradation as a factor in my solar production modeling and route planning but I don't expect it to pla...

It explains exactly what I've seen happen to a number of panels mounted to the front of my recumbent over the years. I've just usually upgraded to a bigger panel before it got too bad each time, although I did have one panel drop to <3W which was rendered useless. So what is the solution? Can we bu...

U assume that Covid-19 destroyed your trip so far :-( Have you already been on the road? I'm stuck in Oakland, trying to focus on the positive aspects of not having to deal with the pandemic while traveling. The trip is on hold for now but my intention is to go ahead when it becomes feasible. In th...