World Solar Challenge Started in Australian Desert

photonic writes "The World Solar Challenge has just finished the first racing day. It is a 3000 kilometer race from Darwin to Adelaide for cars that are powered by solar energy only. The results from this day have not yet been published, but intermediate results suggest that the Dutch Nuon Solar Team is again on the lead. This team from Delft University of Technology has a reputation to uphold since they also won the previous two races in 2001 and 2003, the last one in a record breaking 97 km/h average. The Tesseract team from MIT was less fortunate: during the qualification they got off track and rolled over. After some fixing up they still managed to qualify into 7th place on battery power, but with substantial damage to the solar panel their challenge will be finishing rather than winning."

solar energy only?

What does "for cars that are powered by solar energy only" mean. Do the batteries need to be empty at the start of the trip? Or as full as they were at the start when the cars reach the finish?

Otherwise I wouldn't count it as "solar energy only", even though they might have charged the accumulators beforehand through the solar panels.

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Re:solar energy only?

They may start with batteries charged with 5kWh of stored energy

http://www.wsc.org.au/2005/competition/vehicle.cla sses/solar/ [wsc.org.au]

Those wacky australians...

> during the qualification they got off track and rolled over [wsc.org.au].

Upside down country did it, the solar car was merely trying to right itself.

Another oddity, that khaki colour car there looks like a 4 door GTO 'coupe'

Strange

4 door GTO 'coupe'

Of course it does - it's a Holden Commodore, an Australian icon (not really a fan myself, they're pretty poo cars). The 2-door coupe based off the Commodore is the Monaro, which is exported to the US as the GTO Coupe.

Day 1 results

From the Dutch Nuna website:
The Nuna 3 won day 1, finishing half an hour before the Michigan team (which got a flat tire halfway).

Imperial units

3000 kilometers = 12648.3018 btus per pound force
97 km/h = 8.03640075 furlongs per minute

Re:Imperial units

97 km/h = 162,013.839 furlongs per fortnight

I really respect these guys

It takes a lot of work to build one of these cars. Plus, using them is a lot of work. Think of it this way: you're out in blazing sunlight, no fans or ac (would be using too much extra power, which you can't afford). You start as soon as your car will start (a few minutes after the crack of dawn) and keep going until your car's battery runs down. You don't stop at a hotel because, most probably, there isn't one where you stop. These guys are really building the future. And I respect that.

On another note, does anyone know of a similar competition using hydrogen feul?

Re:I really respect these guys

Yes, but as well the average person drives their car at most 2 hours a day. The sun up 8-16 hours a day. Assuming 12 hours a day of sun that gives you 1 hour of 19.2 (using your 1.6 estimate) horsepower. Still nothing huge, but combine this with a hybrid system its simply one more thing to add to the equasion. Of course a pluggable hybrid that connects to a large scale solar would make more sense. I assume this technology is more about how to get the most miles for the least horsepower, as well as improved solar conversion.

Re:I really respect these guys

you're out in blazing sunlight, no fans or ac (would be using too much extra power, which you can't afford). You start as soon as your car will start (a few minutes after the crack of dawn) and keep going until your car's battery runs down. You don't stop at a hotel because, most probably, there isn't one where you stop. These guys are really building the future.

If that is the future, I'll stick with my SUV, thank you.

My 2 cents

While I normally don't like racing, I am all for solar powered racing. With all the racers competing against each other they find out how to make solar powered cars more efficient, possibly getting them into consumers hands faster. However, I doubt there will be many people who want them until they can get them to go faster than 60mph with a good battery life.

Mass production is the real challenge

As much as I love these contests, I'm not sure they provide much beyond marketing. The skills and technologies needed to create a hand-built, one-off, contest-winner are totally different from those needed to create a factory that makes millions of mass-produced, affordable, everyday vehicles. Its not that hard to make "a" solar-powered car where student labor is free and the solar vehicle runs with a caravan of gas-powered support vehicles. But the real key is to create the manufacturing infrastructure to make millions of them at an affordable price. Other problems, such as a shortage of polysilicon and increasing solar cell prices [zdnet.com] highlight this problem of mass production and have a much bigger effect on the adoption of solar power.

I hope these contests continue, but I also hope people don't think that these contests are solving the real-world problems of applying solar power.

Test driver wanted

http://www.nuonsolarteam.nl/movies/ [nuonsolarteam.nl]
Dutch team is searching for test drivers.

I have some hopes that

this type of contest will lead to advantageous developments in both solar energy generation and electrical power usage. Both of these can lead to a greener world. Sounds coy, but if everyone was contributing to the power grid instead of only sucking from it, the reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy would decrease. This is better for everyone (I'm NOT anti-nuclear or a global warming nutjob) and the planet as well.

As stupid as it sounds, I think that trying to use cleaner energy will lead us to better use of just about everything. If power were essentially free for all to use, there would be a massive shift of cultural and business boundaries. Anyone can donate farm equipment to poor 3rd world countries, but continuous powering of that equipment is the down side. If you teach them to fish with a huge fishing vessel, you still have to show them how to power it.

I'm not saying that power/energy generation and usage is the crux of the world's problems, but when you look at the list of problems, pick the one that gives you the biggest bang for buck when it is fixed, engergy generation/usage is close or at the top of that list.

So, in respect of the possible outcomes of such racing events, I have high hopes that it will lead the world to better ways of doing things. Hybrid cars are a good start, but the technology is still lagging behind where we really need it to be. Approximately 10-25% of US household budgets will be spent on fuels and energy this winter because of the recent hurricanes, damage, and of course price gouging. If we all had the capability of generating at least some of our own energy, it would be competition to other fuel/energy sources... which hopefully would drop the price as well as reliance on oil companies. This can't be anything other than good.

Perhaps windmills on the roofs are not a safe/good idea, but we need something.

More Dutch teams participating

The success of the Dutch team has (finally) caused others to take up the challenge. One is another from the Netherlands, the http://www.solarteamtwente.nl/nieuws.php [solarteamtwente.nl] Solutra team (http://www.utwente.nl/ [utwente.nl] University of Twente). Compared to the Delftian guys, these people are novices, but it's nice to see some real rivalry and competition being initiated. I saw them practice, just a few days before the went to Australia, and asked if they has practiced changing tires (which I think is the important thing in winning the challenge). The answer: no, not yet, do you think that's important?
Remember that it really is a challenge, since temperatures inside the car can get more than 50 degrees Celsius.

Nuclear advocates bound to chime in...

sooner or later, well, wanna have a fight ? Lets googlefight and settle this once and for all

Google Fight - Solar vs Nuclear power! [googlefight.com]

Ohh hell, whatever... you guys can have this one but we'll be back.

new hybrids?

i for one am for the race... of course it will be a long time like the previous posters said... but hey.... how about a couple solar pannels on cars?? It doesn't have to be fully dependent on solar energy... must like the hybrids of today....once the technology gets better... you get the idea... Like the idea of solar powered shingles for houses to reduce energy costs... just the little things to reduce overall consumption of fossil fuels...especially if you are every hurricane season paying $3.00+ for gas....not to mention the cost for heating in the winter....

A lot further than 300km

Darwin to Adelaide is 3050km.

That is an order of magnitude discrepancy with the summary's quoted 300km.

As an Aussie, I knew that sounded wrong. That route is the entire North-South breadth of the continent!

How much HP?

I read somewhere that some of hte teams spend ~ 1 million on their cars and they produce less than 1 HP. Is this true? If so, you could probably tear out the solar panels and batteries and replace the electric engine(s) with a cheap gas one that is good for 200 miles per galon and pocket the other $975,000.

Solar trains

I was reading about this race, and the cars involved, and the comments here on slashdot about "it
s not the future" because the cars are too slow. That may be true.

But what about solar trains? I know that rail systems tend to be designed with as little rolling friction as possible, so that most of the work involved is overcoming intertia. Imagine a train, with solar cells on the roof of each boxcar connected to an electric locomotive on one end or the other. It would start like one of those circus stunts of a guy pulling a rain car with his teeth, i.e. very slowly but the solar cells powering the electric locomotives gradually add some good momentum, and things start moving at a good clip. When night falls, they gradually slow down, and come to a stop for the night.

Imagine that this is continuous, on a homogenous all-solar rail system. Because of the relative uniformity of solar radiation within the medium range, the movement of the various trains on the track will be fairly uniform. Trains should seldom have to brake, and even this braking could be be harnessed, the electric motors used as slow brakes and generators, storing the energy in batteries.

Of course, these trains would be slow. It might take weeks for cargo to get from one end of australia or the US to another. It would also only work where the rail system is pretty flat, unless the aformentioned recovery of inertia can be done with high efficieny and capacity.

It could be useful for commodities that don't have to move fast. Things like ores. Not things like food, which would go bad.

I guess the largest problem with this idea is that it would require a separate rail system, to keep the fast trains from being stuck behind these slow movers. Building such a rail system is expensive.

Building One

Myself and my roomate, more my roomate, are planning on building one of these. This summer he saw the solar power race that goes from Texas to Calgary (not to certain if end-points are correct). I'm not sure if this race is of the same caliber but he saw so many things on those cars that made his hair stand on end ie: why would you use something so heavy? why is the car so far off the ground? Why would you spend so much money on X if you can do it with anohter cheaper material? Basically he saw alot of noobish ideas, isn't this built by university students who are supervised by a prof? The plan right now is to build a solar power car for personal use, so no rules just maximum efficiency, with the idea of entering one of these competitions a few years from now. My question is to those at slashdot that have been involved with these races in the past: are the rules really limiting ingenuity or is it poor design? I know someone was comparing the rules to F1 rules which I think suck. If the rules are the problem then I think I should start planning my own race :-).

Need to use Google Earth

These guys definitely need to use Google Earth to track the cars along the race.

At least Australia cares about technology...

Here in the US, the plan seems to be to conquor the entire planet and pirate fossil fuels until the last drop is used...after which time, I wonder what plan B is? Scoop up corpes of vanquished third-world citizens and burn them, too? The heck with Soylent Green, we'll be too busy converting corpses into Soylent Gas, instead.

I remember reading about Australia's solar-powered car race back in the 80's in the Smithsonian. Naive child that I was, then, I thought, "Wow! If they're doing that already, it can't be five years until we see them on the streets in the US!"

Now, every time I bring this up, I hear "Aw, you can't drive from 'Frisco to Vegas in a single day in a solar-powered car!", so I'll cut out the middle man: You can keep your gas-guzzler for cross-country runs, industrial/commercial use, and off-road exploring. I'm talking about city-use only with these. The average urban dweller just needs to get around town, for driving times of less than 40 minutes each, on roads with lots of stop-and-go driving and speed limits 45 MPH or less - not counting the freeway (In places like LA, the freeways work out exactly the same, anyway, thanks to traffic!). To and from work, the store, appointments, etc. A hybrid electric-solar urban vehicle could be light (about half the raw materials we currently use), two-passenger (who needs the extra seats when most folks wouldn't car-pool if there were a gun to their heads?), and would only need to store a maximum of three or four hours charge (when was the last time you Big City types had a commute longer than that?). The expensive part comes in upgrading all the parking spaces - installing an outlet in each one. The car could locate the sensor whenever it's parked and automatically plug itself in, whenever it detects that it's low on juice. The cost is offset by the parking meters - which we already have all over the place downtown, anyway.

The heck with the future - we should have started doing this ten years ago! Don't give me the usual Slashdot chant: "Can't happen! Won't work! Impossible!" Apply the freakin' science already! Instead of gas running you several hundred dollars a week, you could pay half that in taxes to fund this project.

More info on the Tesseract

From the University of Calgary [wsc.org.au]

MIT's Tesseract met with disaster. Tesseract's front, left, carbon fiber tire rim broke on a tight turn causing the driver to loose control and roll over. After a few tense moments it was announced that the driver was okay, walking away with only a sprained wrist and some very rattled nerves. At the team meeting later in the day, it was mentioned that when the solar car was righted, the driver's head actually bumped the ground as the canopy had split on impact. Thankfully, MIT is one of a few teams participating in the WSC that prioritizes safety over aerodynamics, using both a roll bar and a helmet. No one doubts that the inclusion of these two safety measures assured that the driver was able to walk away today. Tesseract, on the other hand, did not fare as well as its driver. The array and top shell suffered substantial damage, but like any dedicated team, MIT is now burning the midnight oil in hopes of being on the starting line tomorrow morning

More than just Solar vehicles.

This challenge is also for other forms of "clean"/"green" energy.

For example, a team is entering a car powered completely by ethanol. They converted an 80 year old vintage car for the purpose.

Hey why dont we...

I got a design (dont put much faith in it) that mwy work but unfortunately I dont have recources. But I love these solar concept cars. If only our government would spend as much on alternative fules as they do on fossil fuels, we would not have smog issues because there would be no fossil fules. But HEY, what do I know? I'm only an over-informed 16yo.

The world record...

...would be smashed if they raced AWAY from Adelaide.

Re:Solar

I want a solar powered light bulb.

So go buy one then, what's stopping you?
There's a fair selection at the B&Q store in Britain, here [diy.com]

They exist.

You can get solar-powered lights, genius. You get a solar cell, hook it up to a supercapacitor or a rechargable battery, and hook that up to an LED. Control the whole thing with a switch or a phototransistor and you've got a solar-powered light.

I guess you haven't heard about Carmanah Technologies (who make solar-powered lights for bus stops, navigation bouys, etc.) or Engineers without Borders (who provide solar-powered lights for kids in impovershed countries so they can read at night).

Or were you trying to be funny? Old carrot-top routines from 20 years ago just don't cut it once technology improves.