Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Solar for golf cart to extend range of batteries
Thread: Solar for golf cart to extend range of batteries
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Old 02-12-2020, 08:47 PM
Win1894 Win1894 is offline
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Originally Posted by Fastskiguy View Post
Does it take days of charging before that 70 mile drive or how does that work? I honestly didn't think there was that much energy in a few square feet of solar panels....but I would like to be wrong!
A 265 watt panel at our latitude here in TV would generate about 230 watts at noon on a perfectly sunny day mid-spring and mid fall. At the peak of winter that value drops to 160 watts because the sun is at 53 degrees from perpendicular. Cloudy days kill these values. Obviously, these numbers diminish to zero before and after noontime as you approach sunset/sunrise. Additionally, most commercial photo-voltaic cells lose between 1% and 2% efficiency per year so put that into your calculation as well.