Solar Planes Are Hard

A regular comment we see on electric aircraft is to “just add solar panels to the wings.” [James] from Project Air has been working on just such a solar plane, and as he shows in the vi…

Sun On The Run: Diving Into Solar With A Mobile PV System

For obvious reasons, there has been a lot of interest in small-scale residential solar power systems lately. Even in my neck of the woods, where the sun doesn’t shine much from October to Apr…

Solar Powered E-bike Replaces Car Trips

E-bikes can replace car trips for some people, and adding a solar panel can make the fun last longer. [Luke] did some heavy modifications to his RadWagon to make it better, stronger, and faster tha…

Hackaday (unofficial)

Ebike Charges In The Sun

Ebikes are slowly taking the place of many cars, especially for short trips. Most ebikes can take riders at least 16 kilometers (10 miles) without too much effort, at a cost that’s often a si…

Hackaday Prize 2022: Compact Solar Tracking System Doesn’t Break The Bank

If you need to squeeze every available watt out of a solar panel, you’ll probably want to look into a solar tracking system. Unfortunately, they are usually quite large, heavy, and expensive.…

Maximum Power Point Tracking: Optimizing Solar Panels

When looking at integrating a photovoltaic solar panel into a project, the naive assumption would be that you simply point the panel into the general direction of where the Sun is, and out comes go…

2022 Hackaday Prize: Get Your Planet-Friendly Power On!

Time flies! This weekend marks the end of the first stage of the 2022 Hackaday Prize, and your chance to enter your alternative-energy projects. There are ten $500 prizes up for grabs, and there&#8…

Tracking Maximum Power Point For Solar Efficiency

In days of yore when solar panels weren’t dirt cheap, many people (and even large energy companies) used solar trackers to ensure their panels were always physically pointed at the sun to mak…