Why aren’t there solar panels on airplanes? Can we do that? If not why?
In: Engineering
Energy density is low that’s why utility scale solar plants are vast (huge area) so energy harvest becomes significant by increasing system size to encompass such large areas. On a plane, we’d be talking about energy harvest of a few hundred watts or low thousands of watts in peak sun even if major sections of the plane were covered in photovoltaic material. Of course energy harvest would be zero at night and just barely more than that when available solar energy was minimal (cloudy weather, etc.).
Jet fuel is tremendously energy dense (9.6 Kwh/liter).
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