If I live in a place with no hills (i.e.: praires) and I assume a 30 miles per day ride (with lots of sun shining year round) and I want to use a bicycle with a small motor (assisted pedaling) and (this is the most important part) I want to create the electricity (needed to power the bike) with the sun, do you think 1 solar panel would be enough?
The bike would be left to charge at night. The solar panel would gather energy from the sun during the day.
So, what would I need?
1 solar panel,
1 inverter
1 electric bike
What else?
What kind of inverter would you use? What kind of system do you suggest?
1KW? Would that be enough?
micahelm, Don’t tell him that, there are people who can answer, but don’t get to the forum every 10 minutes… Don’t answer for the rest of the forum please.
To answer cleanPlanet’s question, yes, you COULD use 1 solar panel… but is it feasable? Lets say you need 30 miles, and the ebike gets 50Wh/mile. You would need to supply…1500W. Thats a pretty LARGE solar panel.
Another thing, you wouldn’t need an inverter… unless the ebike is AC. You just need a matched controller/motor.
Another thing, what if you are cruising down the road, and get a dark patch of sun? you slow down, or stop… you need SOME batteries in there to buffer the ride.
If you had a solar panel (5-600W) and made it aerodynamic enough to handle the large panel, used some batteries to buffer, had the solar panel charge the batteries via a charge regulator (not inverter), and had a controller/motor you could use it just fine. Its doable, but not cheap.
If you just used a solar panel, controller and motor, you likely won’t get anywhere… as the panel would be very heavy, screw your aerodynamics and cruising Wh/mile.
I am putting in a 3.1kw pv system. I live in Oregon. During the summer on clear days this system will put out between 12 to 18kwh/day. During winter it will put out 5 to 12 kwh/day. My system has 15 panels to it.
If you figure out you kwh used in charging you can scale it down kinda from this info.
