Hey, great video. I have a question: how do you charge your batteries? Do you charge them directly to the charging port or do they have a common charging-discharging port? I have seen people connecting their solar charge controller directly to the small charging port while riding, but that seems dangerous, as the common ebikes batteries are not designed to charge and being discharged at the same time.
First of all we have a selfbuilt battery, the solar charge controller is connected directly to it. This means we can also charge the battery while we are riding, but most of the time we are using assistance, which means the power directly goes from the solar charge controller to the motor. As far as i know this setup is not a problem. Basically our solar cells, battery and motor are connected in a "star point" and electricity chooses the path of least ressistance :)
that's a really good question. Thats definetly possible, but while building this thing we concluded that reliability is our most important factor as we are not building something like a commuter bike that can be worked on every day but a bike for traveling which can be very hard to fix on the go and so we wanted to keep it compact to make it less voulnerable. And we think in the end it would not have made such a big difference, as we were "just" riding about 4 hours a day while charging it with both panels the rest of the day.
We used a mppt solar charge controller from aliexpress and we had two watt meters (amp meters) one between the battery and motors and one between the battery and the mppt solar charge contollers (we used two)
Wondering how the power output turned out to work in real-life touring? No doubt it extended the life of your batteries, but I'm wondering if overall daily power harvested from the sun was enough to keep you riding as you wanted, or were there times you had to stop riding sooner than you wanted to solar-recharge or plug in?
We mostly charged the bike with solar energy and the solar panels produced about 1250 Wh per day. For us the limiting factor was our butt, so we only rode about 4 hour every day with a pace of 25 km/h and good assistance. I would say a bike with solar panels is totally feasible and if you are riding great distances it is a big help and you can always charge your devices, phones etc.
That would be theoretically possible, but has a lot of problems and disadvantages. If you have shade you would instantly loose power, very bad if you're on a climb. You couldn't use regenerative braking, whilst going downhill. I'm not sure if it is technically possible, because solar panels are not a stable power source. You might have to do some testing beforehand, but it would certainly be interesting to see if it works
hey Earle, yes we thought about using a servo motor to tilt the panels, but we decided to not go this way mainly to reduce complexity with the aim to increase reliability. As we were riding from north to south and the other way around, having a tiltable panel is a useful and effective feature, but we assume that you still dont have to change the angle of the panel as often so that an automatic tilting mechanism would be beneficial enough to outweigh the added vulnerability of the system. cheers!
unfortunately we won't be making a video about that anytime soon, but i think you can find some good resources at grin technologies, they sell ebike kits
60cells *.6v/cell *5.9amps =212.4watt panels if those are true sunpower cells. However you got them from china, which is known for fakes, so might be a knock off. what is exact link? please?
So our panels are rated at 200W and as far as we know these are B-grade cells which might explain the difference from your calculation. At good sunny conditions they produced about 150W each which we think is an acceptable value and at supreme conditions like when we rode across the swiss alps with a clear sky and lots of snow reflecting additional sunlight they actually peaked at 220W each www.szjxysolar.com/index.php/products/200w-34-2v-etfe-sunpower-cells-flexible-solar-panel/
Very interesting setup. Genius ideas u got
Very very cool energy
Nice
Hey, great video. I have a question: how do you charge your batteries? Do you charge them directly to the charging port or do they have a common charging-discharging port? I have seen people connecting their solar charge controller directly to the small charging port while riding, but that seems dangerous, as the common ebikes batteries are not designed to charge and being discharged at the same time.
First of all we have a selfbuilt battery, the solar charge controller is connected directly to it. This means we can also charge the battery while we are riding, but most of the time we are using assistance, which means the power directly goes from the solar charge controller to the motor. As far as i know this setup is not a problem. Basically our solar cells, battery and motor are connected in a "star point" and electricity chooses the path of least ressistance :)
wondering if your slide panel mechanism could be set up to travel in full length, and when you need to restrict length, you would then stack them..?
that's a really good question.
Thats definetly possible, but while building this thing we concluded that reliability is our most important factor as we are not building something like a commuter bike that can be worked on every day but a bike for traveling which can be very hard to fix on the go and so we wanted to keep it compact to make it less voulnerable. And we think in the end it would not have made such a big difference, as we were "just" riding about 4 hours a day while charging it with both panels the rest of the day.
Hello did you put the Watt Meter between the GVB-8 and the battery...? or between the solar panel and the GVB-8 controller..? Thanks
We used a mppt solar charge controller from aliexpress and we had two watt meters (amp meters) one between the battery and motors and one between the battery and the mppt solar charge contollers (we used two)
Wondering how the power output turned out to work in real-life touring? No doubt it extended the life of your batteries, but I'm wondering if overall daily power harvested from the sun was enough to keep you riding as you wanted, or were there times you had to stop riding sooner than you wanted to solar-recharge or plug in?
We mostly charged the bike with solar energy and the solar panels produced about 1250 Wh per day. For us the limiting factor was our butt, so we only rode about 4 hour every day with a pace of 25 km/h and good assistance. I would say a bike with solar panels is totally feasible and if you are riding great distances it is a big help and you can always charge your devices, phones etc.
ua-cam.com/video/F27a7yQKD6s/v-deo.html
I'm also planning to make something similar to this. Is it possible to run the motor directly on solar panel ?
That would be theoretically possible, but has a lot of problems and disadvantages. If you have shade you would instantly loose power, very bad if you're on a climb. You couldn't use regenerative braking, whilst going downhill. I'm not sure if it is technically possible, because solar panels are not a stable power source. You might have to do some testing beforehand, but it would certainly be interesting to see if it works
Have you considered using a Servo motor to automatically tilt the panels to always face the sun? There are a few examples of riders doing this. Cheers
hey Earle, yes we thought about using a servo motor to tilt the panels, but we decided to not go this way mainly to reduce complexity with the aim to increase reliability. As we were riding from north to south and the other way around, having a tiltable panel is a useful and effective feature, but we assume that you still dont have to change the angle of the panel as often so that an automatic tilting mechanism would be beneficial enough to outweigh the added vulnerability of the system. cheers!
You may need to use a Genasun mppt,which are much better.
We were quite happy with our solar charge controllers and the genasun mppts are quite expensive
Like to see full build tutorial.
unfortunately we won't be making a video about that anytime soon, but i think you can find some good resources at grin technologies, they sell ebike kits
The brand of your solar cell probably SunPower
Yes, second grade, but no problem for us. It worked great
I want to go with you if you want👍 ❤️
Correction, they are no better, they are the top!!!!!!
60cells *.6v/cell *5.9amps =212.4watt panels if those are true sunpower cells. However you got them from china, which is known for fakes, so might be a knock off. what is exact link? please?
So our panels are rated at 200W and as far as we know these are B-grade cells which might explain the difference from your calculation. At good sunny conditions they produced about 150W each which we think is an acceptable value and at supreme conditions like when we rode across the swiss alps with a clear sky and lots of snow reflecting additional sunlight they actually peaked at 220W each
www.szjxysolar.com/index.php/products/200w-34-2v-etfe-sunpower-cells-flexible-solar-panel/