DailyDirt: Solar Powered Transportation

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The sun blankets our planet in about 100 terawatts of energy every year -- far more than the 15 terawatts that people use annually (largely from fossil fuels). Solar power isn't quite ready to solve all of our energy problems, but solar technology is getting better and better. Here are just a few first steps that could boost solar power use for transportation.

• The Solar Impulse plane completed a journey across the US, making it the first solar-powered plane capable of day and night operation to fly from San Francisco to New York. The plane's top speed is about 45 mph, and an improved version will attempt to make it around the world in 2015. [url]
• The Solar Car Project Hochschule Bochum holds the Guiness World Record for the longest journey by a solar electric vehicle, driving 29,753 km (18,487 miles) from Adelaide, Australia to Mount Barker, Australia. It took 168 days to make that trip, and it probably wasn't exactly Fahrvergnügen. [url]
• The MS Turanor PlanetSolar is the first solar-powered vehicle to circumnavigate the globe in 2012. This solar powered boat took 584 days to travel about 37,286 miles, and it's biggest problem wasn't the technology but avoiding pirates on the open sea. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: electric vehicle, energy, guiness record, solar impulse, solar power, transportation