Build Your Own Car - Batteries and Solar Electric Chargers

Copyright 2008 by Morris Rosenthal - All Rights Reserved

Building a Car

Moved all of my car troubleshooting and repair stuff to a new site

(December 18, 2005) When you're starting absolutely from scratch like this, it's important to find inspiration somewhere. I used to be a member in the Northeast Renewable Energy Something (this goes back a dozen years before my last swerve in life kept me from building an electric car), but aside from some solar car competitions put on for engineering students, there's not a whole lot out there to be inspired by. Practical solar electric applications relating to cars are few and far between, so I'm throwing in the one at the left as a perfect example.It looks a little like a villain from Dr. Who or Lost in Space, but it's actually a parking ticket dispenser in Jerusalem, and Israel is full of these things. It's sunny and the ground is rocky, so pulling underground wires is an added pain, making solar all the more attractive. The little PV panel under the diffusion dome is enough to keep the coin operating, ticket printing device running 24x7, so there has to be a battery involved as well.

A pretty humble starting place for a page about batteries and solar electric charging systems, but I'll be adding to it as I chase down the current facts with the blog. I did just add something to my used laptop pages about extending the battery life of your notebook.