Calling all Engineers. Details to follow. Passive solar water heating for this vehicle? The sun is low on the horizon today and getting lower every day., this is not Peak Sun hitting the solar panels perpendicularly.
And yet 400 watts per hour has been our reading for the last hour or so. In the summertime with the sun right overhead 380 watts is a good day.
What's going on? Temperature.
Warmer months there is plenty of solar and son for hot coffee in the morning. That is not an issue. However, solar thermal require sitting for several hours stationary pedals.
But obviously heat is a problem for the panels. And if there was a way of dissipating that heat with water tubing and there are obvious advantages.
And in the coldest month the availability of warm or hot water to circulate around the batteries would be a nice and obvious advantage.
There are three panels that can be popped towards the Sun they are on roughly one in square aluminum tubing. They would be the easiest Prospect for running tubing behind. And maybe that would be a phase one. There are three more panels laying flat on quarter inch poly carbonate and very thin tubing circulating underneath them might be a good Phase 2.
it's not something that's going to happen unless it catches the fancy of some engineer that thinks it through.