Portable Solar Power charging

Power System
21

I love the idea of alternative or human energy powered flight, and have been thinking about this a great deal over recent years.
The big problem I’ve seen with solar is that the increased weight results in decreased lift, or with a larger wing, more drag. It seems that, with our current solar technology, it would be difficult to increase flight time, rather than decrease it.
Because you don’t want to increase the weight of your wing (otherwise I’d use the spray-on solar on the wing), the only place to really mount the solar is about your harness and such. I have thought that a real light weight (tent/parachute fabric with a carbon fiber frame maybe) air foil frame which encompasses you may reduce drag enough to offset it’s weight, and provide a reasonable surface for mounting some panels.
To me, the option to just have a solar cell with me so I could land, recharge, then take off again a few hours later still has merit, even if it doesn’t help flight time… Make EPPG camping an epic adventure :wink:

I wonder what the drag of a stationary blade is vs a slow-spinning blade as well… it could be possible to recharge the batteries with the propellers when thermaling, descending, or gliding… but again, if the wind against the blades doesn’t create enough torque to use the current motors as generators, it may take more weight than it’s worth to put that into action.

I think wing weight is far less significant with hang gliders, so I think solar coating a hang gliding wing could very well be worth it, particularly if the solar is built into the wing, so takes up some of the structural weight.

22

The best wing option for the current panel technology would be a delta wing. This would require hangar space but would be so sick. Im thinking a trike with loads of batteries, and a rigid wing with solar. Hang gliders perform loads better than pargliders. They just don’t fit in such tiny places.

1 Like
23

I’d wager it’d be worth it for a camping trip :slight_smile:
If you planned for it, you could have a portable charging station which ties in to your household station (or a battery charging bank at least) when you’re not off flying. Install the whole gambit on something that loads up in the truck nicely…
Many of the newer solar panel models don’t suffer from the cascading losses caused by shade that older models suffered from, and can even provide a noticeable charge during overcast conditions. We have some interesting solar tech around the corner too… fiber optic reflection chambers and such… hopefully soon people will have a solar cell on the roof of their vehicle which is their sole fuel source.

24

Nice to see solar progressing – hopefully some day we will panels in the 50% efficiency range or higher – but as I said before, our saving grace in the EPPG will be in the battery tech far before any solar wing tech.
A nice light weight and easy to deploy solar ground based station will also go a long way to helping out and the more the efficiency of the panels the better.
Cheers

Cheers