Comments on: Solar Parking Lot of the Future Does Much More Than Park Cars

By: shitpeis

shitpeis — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:20:00 +0000

Looks good, but seems unrealistic, and like alot of trouble to go through with that idea. A couple of ideas that I think are better (doesent look this stylish though):
- why not put solar panels ontop of parkinghouses instead, and only allow roofparking overnight?
- a similar floating platform, only the future cars have solarpanels on roofs, hoods, windows etc. When you hook a cord up from the car to the grid, you put the power you dont need to charge the batteries, into the grid, whitch inturn releases a bike you can ride into town

By: Helman700

Helman700 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:55:02 +0000

The question is how much energy can really be produced off the reflection of a windshield, it seems like common sense that a lot of that energy passes through the glass and turns to heat. If we all had those reflective visors to put on the dash or even an attendant could put them on the outside and we’d drop them off before leaving it would probably improve that.

By: deegital

deegital — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:24:32 +0000

Well, let’s think of this “outside-the-box” idea from a classic “inside-the-box” point of view and try to find some minor improvements…
Imagine this complex system of micro-mirrors on the roof of Quashqai, constantly tracking the movement of the Sun, locating (with some radar technique?) concentrating point on the tower, controlling servos to point the sunbeam onto the tower – and all of this stuff is constantly working, ’cause the Sun is constantly moving (in relative coordinates)… That would use a lot of energy from the car’s sources. I doubt whether this amount of energy will be compensated by the reflected beam’s energy at a distance of 100 meters (or wherever the tower is). Also that would add a noticeable amount of bucks to a price of this Quashqai.
Why not add a minor improvement, which will let us save costs on complex mirror-systems in every car (and their repair/maintenance as well), save energy on constant tracking systems on every vehicle and also will let us park old cars (without such systems) without any harm to this parking/plant’s energy efficiency?
That improvement is – mirror roof for every parking place, with it’s own centrally-controlled servo, centrally-tracked Sun and pre-calculated tower position.