Solar Panel Comparison

To get a better idea of the actual size and weight required we compared several off-the-shelf panels and put the data together in a spreadsheet (You can see the full sheet in the Reference section below):

From this we generated a scatter chart showing the weight and area covered by the various solar panels in both fixed and tracking layouts.

As expected the tracking arrays are smaller than the fixed arrays but also heavier. Realistically the most we can carry is roughly 1000lbs. And we want to minimize the surface area to simplify setup. So let’s focus on the bottom left corner:

All of this assumes we’re using off-the-shelf panels. But what if we build our own panels? In theory that should allow us to better optimize the design and further reduce the area and weight. We’ll examine that in more detail next.

One important thing we haven’t included is losses due to the electrical conversions feeding the power into the car. This can be as much as 25%. Obviously this would force everything to be even bigger and heavier. We’ll also discuss ways to minimize this later.

Reference

Download link: Click here to download