Solar wrapped batteries charge themselves

Now this could inspire more devices being made with transparent battery covers.

Abandonvehicle

- February 26, 2009 @ 11:02 am PST

if solar thin film photovoltaic collector will be blocked from incoming sunlight, you could put the battery or batteries on top of a mirror surface so that the batteries will take advantage of the solar thin film better. otherwise, the batteries can be manufactured with smaller thin film area on them, such as only half of the battery that will be exposed to sunlight. you mentioned the problem of the batteries getting too hot in sunlight; a small portion of the electricity can be used to power a small fan to increase cooling rate for a large array of these batteries; the heat produced in this way could be used to heat the hot water for a household, while the batteries can be the battery to provide solar elecricity at night. so you would have a combined photovoltaic electric collector with battery array and solar hot air, which can be applied to direct air heating and/or preheating the hot water supply partially to reduce other fuel consumption.

- February 26, 2009 @ 03:02 pm PST

Since putting batteries in direct sunlight is generally a bad idea, why not coat a battery-operated device with cheap solar cells and let the device charge it's own batteries.

Polly Anne Mobley Aylor

- February 27, 2009 @ 03:02 pm PST