Solar Panels Top With Awnings for R1 by Solarrolla

[VSG]

Agreed with everything said in this thread. Seems like very little to be gained.

BUT…opportunity to ask a technical question. If the panels are charging a battery pack you lug with you, can it also charge when you’re on the road? The sun is out…

Technically yes, but since the panels in this case have to be retracted you only get 1/3 of the maximum sun, then you have to put the power into a battery which can hold like 2kWh? Which can later be used to charge your Rivian and give it about about 4 miles. But after the battery is full, you're just missing out on that power. Plus, chances are when you're driving you're not going to be in sun the whole time. At least around here - we have a lot of big trees. So to summarize, if you believe the claim of 30 miles/day then with only 1/3 the panels you will get at most 10 miles then you can only hold about 4 miles of that in your battery and if you're driving all day you're not going to be adding any more to the battery when you stop. So effectively unless you're parked in the sun you're not going to be getting anywhere near the maximum the panels can put out.

Sponsored

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Maybe we’re being too hard on them. I can think of exactly one use case:

We’re going on a cruise and decide to drive the R1. Port is exactly 300 miles from my house and I’ll be gone for a week. The parking deck has disabled all of the 120Vs and there are no L2 chargers or DCFCs nearby.

Never fear, I sprawl out this bad boy on the roof top of the parking deck. At 15kW/day I’m back to 80% charge after my weeklong cruise. Luckily there was no rain either.

I’m sure if we try we can find at least one more scenario.

 

[VSG]

Sure, but you're never going to get 15kWh a day, even in full sun. How many Watts do those panels provide? They have very little info on their website. Maybe 5kWh a day total is more realistic. Level 1 charging has a large overhead, so you will only get about 6 miles of range for those 5kWh. And unless it plugs directly into the charge port, you're not going to be directly charging your HV battery either - if it goes into a portable battery first then your total power acquired over that week will be only the capacity of your battery.

In your scenario, you could just stop by a DCFC before you hop on your boat, pay the $50 to fill up your battery. If this system costs $5000, then what are you saving? It would take 100 cruises to break even. ($5k seems like a really low estimate, as their golf-cart roof is $3,500 for only about 400W of solar).

There just isn't enough surface area to mount enough solar to make a significant difference on a vehicle with an efficiency of only around 2.5 mi/kWh. No matter how cool it would be to do this, and no matter how much we want it. The scenarios where it might help are boondocking while running appliances - then you wouldn't have to deplete your HV battery pack to provide electricity for your campsite. But I wouldn't count on it to add very much to your pack beyond preserving your SoC.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Reminds me of this from over a year ago: https://insideevs.com/news/737297/rivian-r1t-solar-tonneau-cover/ And this from 2020: https://www.motortrend.com/news/worksport-terravis-solar-tonneau-cover-truck-bed-power-system

Where are the solar tonneau covers? Rhetorical.

 

[VSG]

Yes, those are some of the previous discussions I was referring to. This has been talked to death and the numbers still don't work, no matter how much we want them to.

 

[CharonPDX]

Obligatory xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1924/

If you go off-grid overloading frequently, and have a big EcoFlow/Jackery/similar that you can use it to charge, maybe it would be worth it, but I doubt even then.

This is going to cost way more than the usability you'll get from it warrants.


The only "solar panels on a vehicle" that make any sense fall into two categories:

1. Small solar panels that exist solely to top-up/run 12V battery/systems, like keeping the fan running when parked in the sun. (See Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius, and more.)

2. Aptera - so ridiculously efficient, and completely plastered with solar panels that it actually can add a usable amount of charge per day, assuming you live in a sunny area and park in full sun all day.

 

[Rade]

Nice concept, but I have an EcoFlow Delta Max backup battery pack that would be easier to work with, and I could store the Max and spare battery in the gear tunnel.

 

[JeremyP]

I think it's a cool concept and they've built a few electric camper vans with similar panel setups. A bonus is when the panels are slid out they act as awnings. If the panel frame directly connects to the roof mounts it could stay fairly low profile and not impact aero too much. It may not be practical for most people and most situations but I want to do some multi-day trips in the desert which will be marginal for range and something like this could probably add the buffer to complete the trip.

 

[JPK]

We have a somewhat similar setup with a Jackary solar generator, but our intention has never been to add or extend the range of our R1T. We use ours to maintain our small Jackary battery pack which runs our powered cooler, electric cooking devices, camp lighting, and a water pump for filtering water/washing/bathing. Could we manage all of this just with the R1T’s battery? For sure. Do I sleep better with the R1T totally powered down so I don’t have to worry about accidentally draining off too much range while we’re at the campsite? Absolutely.

 

[MikeWilliams_R1T]

Talk about a Rube Goldberg setup!

I could see this being *somewhat* practical if you paired the panels with a 15 or 20 kWh battery... then you could make this a self-filling range extender. You would want to provide for additional solar panels or the ability to AC charge it at home since the solar alone would be God awful slow.

The problem is this range extending battery and the inverter would take up a lot of space. The inverter would have to be big enough to pump at least 7kW at 240v so you can do a level 2 charge. Even better if you can make it DC to DC charge the HV battery but there goes even more storage space.

 

[Greg Chick]

Yes, but when deployed, they act like wings and you can fly. This makes the R1 truly an off road vehicle.

That's going on your permanent snark record.

 

[LeeY]

If I could stuff this in my camper and easily deploy it when I’m settled in for a week, it could be of some use eliminating the vamp drain and maybe grabbing a few miles.
But then there’s price point..

 

[jrmbadger]

I can probably get an equivalent amount of increased range by just driving 5mph slower and that doesn't cost me anything but time.

 

[Dasoss]

I call BS on the upto 30 miles a day claim, that's approximately 15kw of energy. No way those 6 panels can generate that much in a day with the flat layout. I have 37 panels on my roof and on the best day in July only generated 64kw.

Also I bet the drag of that setup probably will cost you more range than it will recover.

Energy is measured in KWh; power is measured in. KW. The SI (metric) unit is the Joule (J). 1 KWh = 3.,6 MJ The peak solar input at sea-level is about 1 KW per square meter with no clouds etc. Pretty good solar cells are about 20% efficient, so there you are. As a rule of thumb, you can expect the average energy collected over a good day to be about 6.6 h x the peak output in KW of your array, assuming the panels are optimally oriented. Peak power happens if the panels are normal (90 degrees) to the direction to the sun. I guess that your panels are smaller than normal and/or suboptimally oriented. This is generally the case.
Back to the array in the picture. I'm guessing about 6 square meters. So 6 x 0.2 = 1..2 KW peak. Allowing 0.8 for the orientation i figure 1.2 x 0.8 x 6.5 = 6.25 KWh/day. That could be 15 miles. That's at least in the ballpark of their claim. My estimate is very conservative, so I think their claim of "as much as" is reasonable.
Not very many miles. However it could compensate for the drain while parked during an extended stay, e.g. climate controll, 12 V battery maintenance, gear guard, lights, entertainment, cooking, etc.
.

 

[Jeff B.]

Definitely overthinking a problem with this solution. Portable suitcase style solar panels and an inverter/battery setup, would be much more portable and adaptable than something like this if this .

Sponsored