>The vw bus needs, at a guess, 20,000 BTU's of cooling, perhaps more. A very >high efficiency air conditioner uses about 1 watt of power for each 12 >watts of >heat removal. So, you'd need 20,000 Watts/12 = 1.666 KW to power the system. I made a goof here. My thermo teacher would have flayed me alive for this. The numbers are right, however, I should have said "A very high efficiency air conditioner uses about 1 watt of power for each 12 BTUs of heat removed." >Now, the sun beats down with an intensity of about 1 KW/m^2, very good solar >cells are 22 % efficient. Such solar cells are EXTREMELY expensive. 10-15% >efficiency is more common. I.e. you can get 220 W per square meter of solar >cell area. So, you'd need 1.666 KW/220 W/m^2 = 7.6 m^2. > >So, in short, with everything stacked on your side, there's still not enough >area on top of the bus to supply the energy to run an air conditioner. Joshua Van Tol -- jjvantol@uswest.net |
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