solar powerd off road trike build log

not planning on it, weve got fairly good sun in australia, almoast 5kwh/m^2 per day on avrage and i'm planning the trip to stay in at lest that moast of the time, by tilting in the morning and afternoon I can get a substanchel amont extra, 30% or so. with half the size pannel slightly less efficent cells I could get 30-35 ah in a day, so around 1700wh. it also woant be easy to find a plug moast nights because il often be camping and/ or in remote arias. still it dose seem atractive when it would mean that I could nearly double my dayly distence, and be more fun for more of the time, still that would put me futher from the leagal 200-250w witch could be pretty bad. so no Im not planning on plugging in to charge every night, it would/ will be cool to be able to circle a (small) contenent conpleatly independently of fossil fuel (give or take food)
 
dont forget its 250watt continuous power, peak power can be up around 700watts, I haven't found exact figure for peak power,
in the 200watt limit thread on esforum, no one else has seen anywhere in the literature what the equivalent peak power figure is.
 
ye, about 200-250 continuious, peaks way higher. I got lights on the outher day, loockes pretty sweet at night.
 

Attachments

  • DSCF1211.JPG
    DSCF1211.JPG
    2.4 KB · Views: 2,232
i bought some cheap evergreen cells off ebay, 15by 8cm, surprised to see 2.5amps output in full sun
 
whatever said:
i bought some cheap evergreen cells off ebay, 15by 8cm, surprised to see 2.5amps output in full sun
Click to expand...
Im also suprised that your only getting 2.5 amps, are you mesureing a single cell or a string? I find that the resinstence in the lenth of tab lines and the ammeter are so great that what you mesure as a single or double cells short circet current is mutch lower than what youl get from a string solderd togeather. this is because you quickly loose 0.5-1v in the farily high resistence wireing.

yesterday I went for my first medium distence test ride, 160km, 50 or so in bush tracks and 70 with a serious head wind. I avraged 25 crused at 30 on the hiway. I used about 60ah and produced 40, but I did end up wasting a whole lot of sunlight. i was pleased to see 9.4 amps coming into my battery at one point in good sun.
 
wow 160km thats amazing, I was suprised by 2.5amp output, but surprised in a good way! The cells are not full size cells so I was thinking I would be lucky to
get 1.5amps, they exceeded my expectations. I have measured some individually and some in strings of 6, I will have to measure all cells before puting into
strings in future, as some strings had 'dud' cells, by dud I mean ones that I had cracked in the tabbing process.
Your work is inspiring, did you have any problems with traffic on the road sections? Its going to be pretty dangerous going around oz.
by your figures you supplied 2/3 of your power needs..........not bad at all.
 
2.5 amps is still a vearry usefull current, espechelly from smaller cells. because of the sereis conections it is worth the pain in the arse involved in making a b cells heap with cracked cells, when you get enough they still make usefull pannels.
on the trip Im planning to be a bit more dilegent with my sun use to get the full 100% of my power. not leaving the trike fully charged during the middle of the day for hours should help with that. traffic wasent as bad as I'd feard, the wtf factor lights and flags tend to make shure I get a resable birth. main hyways will be best traveld in the early moring when Im more visable coz of lights and theres vearry little traffic.
thanks for the support.
 
only 2 days to go now, I finally got the radio working well, Im fairly happy with the speaker boxes, thanks to justin for making the paper moulds. tip speakers and a second hand radio, when only the best will do :D
 

Attachments

  • DSCF1228.JPG
    DSCF1228.JPG
    56.4 KB · Views: 2,147
  • DSCF1237.JPG
    DSCF1237.JPG
    53.2 KB · Views: 2,147
first day, dident leave the show till about 1pm but still made it about 130km and only used 5-10 ah from the pack
 
Wow, I can't believe I missed your thread. Lots of panel and a comfortable ride sounds like it's working out great. Can you post some closeups of how you mounted the motor and attached the pulleys?

I need to get on the stick with a trike and some solar powered shade.

John
 
you've already left on your around australia ride???????????????????
 
Il get some photoes up soon. yes Ive left. 350km in the first 1.5 days, and producing about as much as Ive been using, Im going walking tomorrow so everything will be charged up when I leave.
 
I'd be interested in following your trip. Do you plan to provide updates often? A map would be nice for fellows like me who are not that familiar with Australia geography. Anyway, have fun.
 
solarshift said:
Il get some photoes up soon. yes Ive left. 350km in the first 1.5 days, and producing about as much as Ive been using, Im going walking tomorrow so everything will be charged up when I leave.
Click to expand...

You're Da Man! Have a great trip! I need to start preparing my family for me to take off for a few months. I don't know how that will go over, but too bad. :shock:
 
SamTexas said:
I'd be interested in following your trip. Do you plan to provide updates often? A map would be nice for fellows like me who are not that familiar with Australia geography. Anyway, have fun.
Click to expand...
Il try to get somthing up when I have some time to kill, Il be updating the faceboock page and blog farily reguerlyish and putting a bit more tecky stuff up here.
anyway today I walked to south point, the moast southerly point of the austraian mainland.
 
Sooooo cool! I would LOVE to be able to financially afford to do something like this! Even a month would be awesome!
 
solarshift said:
Il try to get somthing up when I have some time to kill, Il be updating the faceboock page and blog farily reguerlyish and putting a bit more tecky stuff up here.
anyway today I walked to south point, the moast southerly point of the austraian mainland.
Click to expand...
Sounds good. Enjoy your solar powered trek.
 
I had a little expirence getting into a frends place on monday night, partallyy helped by me thinking that in the morning I had 30-35ah in the battery pack when I appear to only have had about 23. darn. theres no point in wrighting the whole advnture oult agean, its up on the blog, so heres the link http://solarshiftaus.blogspot.com.au/
 
whatever said:
so I gather you going clockwise around oz? vic to sa?
Click to expand...
not really, Ive ridden down to melbourne for a sustainabilty fesavel, but mext Im going north and east. geographicly its ilogical but it was a great opotunity to head down for this gig.
 
have you experienced a roll over yet or gone close??
I have a very similar trike in terms of wheel size ( 26" I assume all round?) and dimensions. I found that roads with a large camber angle were hard to
drive on, the back wheel having a tendancy to slip sideways and having to correct via steering, can be quite scary.
I did roll over twice, both times involving a roadside ditch, fortunately at slow speed so no large damage, happened whilst pulling to the side of the road
and it was pretty dark without good lights ( I have full fairing, no solar panels....yet).
Another issue is wheels bending on tight corners at decent speeds, you can tie the spokes together where they cross will help, but even with wide rims there
is a possibility of a rim collapsing on a tight bend at speed.
Solution to these problems on my trike is going to small diameter wheels ( without spokes) which I haven't done yet but I will at some stage.
 
That's one of the big reasons I want to do a leaner when I build a trike, alway ride upright with wheels vertical despite camber in the road.

Solarshift, do you have regen, so In a worst case scenario you could pedal for a while and get your lights back for some camping?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

S
help me choose a motor
Replies
2
Views
454
solarshift
S
Back
Top