Clear roofing garage

Aptera Community Aptera Discussions Clear roofing garage

Aptera Community Aptera Discussions Clear roofing garage

  • Clear roofing garage

    Posted by Enceladus on May 17, 2023 at 12:59 pm

    Has anyone designed a garage with a clear roofing material so sunlight can reach the solar cells when you’re not going anywhere?

    • This discussion was modified 1 week, 1 day ago by  bbelcamino.
    Enceladus replied 2 weeks, 5 days ago 7 Members · 14 Replies
  • 14 Replies
  • Clear roofing garage

    Enceladus updated 2 weeks, 5 days ago 7 Members · 14 Replies
  • joshua-rosen

    Member
    May 17, 2023 at 1:04 pm

    It’s called a greenhouse. Put up a greenhouse with a concrete floor and you have an Aptera friendly garage.

  • Enceladus

    Member
    May 17, 2023 at 1:14 pm

    Yes, thank you for that. Will the glass/clear roof allow for the same solar recharge it would if the Aptera were parked outside? Or does the roofing diminish the amount of sun reaching the Aptera’s solar cells?

    • ROMAD

      Member
      May 17, 2023 at 1:40 pm

      It would depend on how light transparent the glass was. The clearer the transparency, the more photons will pass through.

    • alain-chuzel

      Member
      May 17, 2023 at 6:31 pm

      Under the best of conditions, very roughly, about 8% of the sunlight hitting common window glass is reflected away. That means, at best, Aptera’s solar panels can produce only 92% of what they would produce if the common window glass wasn’t there.

  • dennis-green

    Member
    May 17, 2023 at 1:39 pm

    We should considered solar tubes. I don’t like the idea of parking the Altera outside.


    From a Google Bard search: “Solatube is another leading manufacturer of sun tubes and are known for their energy efficiency. They use a patented optical system to direct sunlight into your home, even on cloudy days.”

    • Enceladus

      Member
      May 17, 2023 at 1:58 pm

      I don’t want to park my Aptera outside either if I can determine the most efficient material to admit sunlight. I had forgotten about Solartubes, and they’ve been around for a long time. Perhaps engineers have done studies about using them for recharging solar cells indoors?

  • dennis-green

    Member
    May 17, 2023 at 2:15 pm

    Any tech heads out there want to compare specs? Would it be enough light to make a difference?

    Solatube: https://solatube.com/technical-resources/architectural-specifications/

    Natural Light Energy Systems:

    https://nltubular.com/performance/output/

    • Enceladus

      Member
      May 17, 2023 at 2:22 pm

      Thanks for the links! This could be promising.

    • alain-chuzel

      Member
      May 17, 2023 at 7:37 pm

      The “standard” level of irradiance for sunlight at sea level when impingent at 0 degree angle of incidence is 1000 watts per square meter. The largest “Natural Light Tubular Skylight” (21 inch (I assume that’s a diameter)) has an area of about 346 inches which equates to about 0.22 square meters. Aptera’s got about 3 square meters of solar panels so you’d need 3/.22 or 13 to of these skylights to equal the sun.

    • Jeff

      Member
      May 17, 2023 at 7:53 pm

      “Would it be enough light to make a difference?”

      No.

      Looks like the biggest residential skylight on those sites has a 18” diameter tube. Even using optimal assumptions…

      0.164 m^2 x 1000 W/m^2 light intensity x 22% solar cell efficiency x 90% charging efficiency = 32 watts.

      And that’s a with a lot of unrealistically optimal assumptions thrown in (midday, no clouds, sun directly overhead, 100% of the light transmitted, 100% of the light hitting cells, etc.).

      And now that I think of it, I wonder how the Aptera’s solar array will react to spotty shade / inconsistent light intensity across the body of the vehicle. If it acts like a regular solar panel where partial shade on even a small part of a single panel can dramatically reduce output, a bit of light focused on one part of the Aptera while the rest is in shade might not generate hardly any power at all.

      • alain-chuzel

        Member
        May 18, 2023 at 6:34 am

        And now that I think of it, I wonder how the Aptera’s solar array
        will react to spotty shade / inconsistent light intensity across the
        body of the vehicle. If it acts like a regular solar panel where partial
        shade on even a small part of a single panel can dramatically reduce
        output, a bit of light focused on one part of the Aptera while the rest
        is in shade might not generate hardly any power at all.

        Aptera’s individual panels (hood, dash, roof and hatch) will each likely have 1 or more MPPT controllers and some number of integral “bypass diodes” to mitigate “mismatch” caused by uneven illumination. This is a common design approach within the solar car racing community (I’m a charter member….).

  • gary-greenway

    Member
    May 18, 2023 at 7:13 am

    You’d be better off putting a few solar panels on the roof of the garage and charging that way.

  • Enceladus

    Member
    May 19, 2023 at 7:55 pm

    Thank you, everyone, for your input. Since I plan to eventually put solar panels on another part of my roof anyway, putting a few more on the existing garage seems to make better sense than adding another garage with a transparent roof.

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