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hi was woundering how pratical it would be to have a solar pannal say 30' long by 5' wide placed on tob of a working fridge trailer to help power the fridge if anyone knows how much energy this would suply and also have some kind of wind turbine in use as i think this could be benifital to the transport industry al battrys could be placed between the shasy of the tailer any coments would be graitfully exseped
driver01, Jul 15 2009
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Not very, due to the energy required. It is mostly costs.
It has been suggested and rebutted before. A wind turbine attached to a moving vehicle simply introduces drag, which means more fuel needs to be consumed to overcome the drag.
A quick back-of-an-envelope calculation shows that a 5' by 30' solar panel would probably generate something in the neighborhood of 500 watts average over the course of an entire day. Of course, it depends on a lot of variables, so an exact answer can't be given. 500 watts won't be enough to keep the fridge trailer cold by itself, so you would still need an additional source of energy. Solar panels will have to come down in price a lot before this would be worthwhile.