This is one I haven't found, but somebody has to have thought of this arleady. But if not, here goes.
Many of us place windshield visors in our cars to deflect sunlight so the car doesn't heat up too much in the summer time.
Why not have create one out of a flexible solar panel? Sitting outside all day, this ought to generate a little bit of power.
What to do with the power? Well, maybe connect it to a little fan to circulate in in the car, to lower the temp further. Or, for something really wacky, store it, and at night plug it into an outlet and sell back power to the power company.
with 100 million cars on the road, who knows?
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I have seen solar window fans for cars. Otherwise they could be used to charge mobile batteries, or keep the car battery charged. They would not really have enough power to resell to the power company.
This sounds great and the solar power juice could be converted to dc and just run the ac/heater blower in the car to circulate the air. One problem with cooling the interior is the fact that once the sunlight goes through the glass it creates heat thus increasing the interiors temperature. What we need is something or someway to keep the suns rays from even getting to the windows in the first place, like a window cover (all windows) on the outside. But how? Like shutters or a blind. I've seen a system introduced by one of the car companys that once the ignition was turned off the windows would turn silver, thus reflecting the suns rays. Of course I wouldn't want to be driving and that happen. nuff said. Any ideas???
I like the idea of using this energy to circulate the air in the car. It may be best to set this up outside of the car, because once the light passes through the glass it has lost some energy (especially in IR and UV) and is going to contribute to heating the car.
Well your idea is good, but I saw a device used in South Africa, where the window is wound up almost to the top, but a cooling unit placed in between the wound up glass and its final closed slot, the unit was running on solar energy extracting the hot air and pulling in fresh air at the same time.The window still remained secure and the unit itself very firm in place.
Welding helmets now have "liquid crystal" shading that reacts almost instantaneously to the light from a welding arc. Typically they run on batteries, but there's no reason (aside from the HUGE cost) that car windows couldn't have the same shading, powered by a solar cell array. The same solar cells could also run the heater/AC blower to force hot air from the inside of the car. Off-the shelf technology, or nearly so.
I completely agree with what you are saying, and that's why I'm making exactly what you are describing for a science fair project. I actually didn't get the idea from you, I just happened to come across this site while doing research. I will be making a solar panel/visor for a windshield of a car which then transfers the energy to a battery which will store the energy. Then that energy can be used to charge cell phones or laptops. I'll keep you guys posted if you want.
I see a couple of people suggesting that the panel needs to be outside of the glass so that you get the full benefit of the suns rays on the panel, but what no one has pointed out is that solar panels get very hot when converting sunlight to electricity. So, if your aim is to cool the car off using electricity from sunlight, you must put the panels outside of the car or else you are introducing a heater into the area that you are trying to cool.
There is an electric car made in Cali that the entire windshield and windows produce solar energy. Gone are the days of seperate devices needed to make energy from the sun. Many companies are integrating thin film photovoltaics into glass...