Solar Xpedition Day 3

I had 100 miles to cover. I filled my water bottles, charged my batteries, applied sunscreen, and took off.

I used my motor sparingly in order to make it the whole way. I started out with 720 Wh from my two batteries. The panels gave me another 100. And I was able to freeload another 100 from the cafe where I had lunch. People look at you funny when you ask to use their outlet to charge a massive 12-pound battery, but so far no one has refused.

As I neared my destination the sky darkened and rumbled. A shadow passed over me and I felt as if a giant foot was about to step on me. The sky opened and out poured its contents. In this situation I usually just put on my swimsuit and keep biking. But a man beckoned me over to his porch. We sat drinking beers and watching the lightning crackle and boom like a fireworks show.

I finally reached my destination. My family and friends welcomed me. I was tired but happy. And I had proven to myself that long distance travel by electric cargo bike is possible and even enjoyable. Not necessarily enjoyable in the sense of comfortable, but enjoyable in the sense of meeting people and experiencing nature firsthand rather than from behind a window.

And I showed myself that solar power can have a valid supporting role in my suchlike travels. I think the ease with which an electric cargo bike can be made solar makes it a good starting point for future experiments.

bicyclist’s view of wildlife

Silver Bay

Solar Xpedition Day 2

I was frustrated about having to repair a flat tire every hour or so and I was concerned that I might run out of patches. I needed to get to a bike shop soon. There was a Walmart 12 miles away in Rome. Could I make it? Long story short I made it. I bought three inner tubes, two patch kits, a floor pump, a tire, and a file in case I needed to convert my presta rim to schrader.

Any kook can slap a solar panel on a bicycle and call it a solar bike. How am I any different? Mainly in my lack of ambition. I don’t want to create a ground-breaking product that will rocket me into the halls of fame. I just want to charge my battery however much I can within my budget. I just want to do the experiment to find out if adding a solar panel to my bike is worth the effort and expense. And if it is, I want to post instructions on my blog here so others can follow in my footsteps.

People see my bike and they expect that the solar panels power the bike completely. The reality of course is that the solar panels are an accessory to an accessory. First of all the electric assist is an accessory to you the bicyclist who is pedaling. Secondly the solar panels are an accessory to the electric assist. The solar panels supplement the electric assist’s batteries in those few instances where you can’t get to a power outlet. So despite the panels’ physical prominence on my bike and in our imaginations, currently they have only a minor role in actually making the bike go forward. Not insignificant, but minor.

What would it take to give the panels a major role? At least a four-fold increase in power. Currently the panels produce about 25 Wh per hour. 100 Wh per hour would be very useful for a long trip since it takes me about an hour to use up 100 Wh. That means I could accumulate energy about as fast as I use it. I could go indefinitely (on a sunny day). I think it’s entirely possible to get a four-fold increase with existing technology. Just adding more panels is a start (perhaps as a canopy over the driver). And it may be possible to make the panels more efficient by adding a charge controller with sophisticated electronics (such as Power Point Tracking).

Bicyclists out there may be wondering “If the power you get from the solar panel is so small, why not just take all that crap off your bike and pedal the damn thing?” This is a very good question that has been nagging at me throughout the ordeals of this trip. I have to keep in mind that this is just a beginning. The point is not to just reach my destination here and now. The point is to pioneer a new type of vehicle. It’s not a solar car–it has pedals so that its human can supplement its power if necessary. Is it a bike? Whatever it is, it is a vehicle that is so lightweight, narrow and slow that even the meager power of the sun can power it.

Adirondack Gateway Campgrounds = heaven

catching photons in Hinckley State Forest

Solar Xpedition Day 1

The day began overcast. Not a good start for the Solar Xpedition. But by midday Mr. Sun broke through and the watt hours came rolling in. I ran with my solar panel connected to the working battery (rather than the spare). It was exciting to see the power drop as I went up a hill and then gradually be restored by the panel.

My power use went very well the first day. I didn’t even need to get out the spare battery. It’s hard to know how much of the 500 watt hours I used the first day was supplied by the panel since I don’t yet have a way to measure watt-hours output. But I estimate that the battery had 360 to start with, the solar panel added 70 and charging at a restaurant while eating dinner added 70.

Many things didn’t go well, in particular 7 flat tires and swarms of mosquitos at my campsite.

Stay tuned for day 2.

Pompey NY

the wonderful Erie canal trail

charging up while I take a nap.

My Solar Bicycle

I am anticipating peoples’ reactions:

“Why do you have solar panels on your bicycle?”

“What do you do when it rains?”

“Can the solar panel drive the electric motor directly?”

“Did you make it yourself?”

“What the…”

Allow me to explain. My vehicle of choice is a “stoked Xtracycle”. (For those of you not “in the know”, an Xtracycle is a type of cargo bike that has an extra long frame. And “stoked” means that my bike has a Stokemonkey electric motor that helps me out on the hills.) In general this summer I’ve been biking 10 to 20 miles a day and then recharging my battery overnight by simply plugging it into an outlet. However, next week I’m going on a 3-day 240-mile camping trip through the Adirondacks where I might not have access to an outlet. The solar panels will help extend the range of my bicycle. So to answer your questions:

“Why do you have solar panels on your bicycle?”

I use them to extend the range of my electric cargo bike for long trips (plus they were fun to make). I will carry two batteries on my trip, each giving my bike a range of 20 to 40 miles. On a sunny day the solar panels can recharge one of the batteries while I am riding, adding an additional 20 to 40 miles for a total range of 60 to 120 miles a day. I anticipate some hills and I’ll be carrying a load, so a 60-mile range is probably more accurate. I may need to pedal the last few miles on some days.

“What do you do when it’s cloudy or it rains?”

I plan to stay in a hotel some of the time and recharge my batteries there.

“Can the solar panel drive the electric motor directly?”

Not really. The solar panels don’t produce enough electricity instantaneously. For example the solar panels only produce about 40 watts of power at a given moment, whereas my bicycle needs about 400 watts of power to go up a hill. The main purpose of the solar panels is to charge the battery over time.  Since charging happens slowly, 40 watts is enough to charge the battery. It takes roughly 10 hours of charging to store one to two hours’ worth of electrified riding time in the battery. And one to two hours of riding translates into 15 to 30 miles.

“Did you make it yourself?”

I already had the stoked Xtracycle, which is described on my About This Bike page. As you can read there, an electric cargo bike can be had for $1000 to $3500. And I had already constructed the canopy frame for a previous project, the Bike Wagon Canopy ($150). I found the canopy was somewhat wobbly with the weight of the solar panels so I had to strengthen it with guy wires. It remained for me to add the solar panels and the electronics. I used maritime-grade solar panels that were designed to keep sailboat starter batteries charged up, so they are extra-sturdy and consequently somewhat expensive. I’ve since seen panels with almost twice the power at 3/4 the price. Cost of panels: $900 to $1200. I am using three 12-volt panels in series to produce the 36 volts required by my battery. I spent a lot of time researching what sorts of electronics I would need between the panels and the battery, and finally concluded that I can just plug the panels into the battery directly. (I plan to write more about this in a later post.)

Total cost for a solar bicycle: $2050 to $4850. Not bad for a vehicle that can get you both out of the car and off the grid.

The Case of the Rude Bicyclists

A family shopping trip by bike.

To a Friend:

I’ve been thinking more about our conversation this morning, about how when you were driving you encountered two rude bicyclists who were biking side-by-side and wouldn’t get out of your way. A few more points occurred to me. One is that when you said this I instantly imagined two lycra-clad men very purposefully getting in your way. I think this is what most people would imagine. And what I imagined does seem rude.

But upon further reflection I thought what if the bikers were a family coming home from the grocery store, as maybe you were that day? What if this family wanted to talk with each other on the way home without another vehicle disrupting their conversation? Does the family in the car have more of a right to a pleasant conversation on the road than the family on the bikes?

Note that the “lycra-clad” cyclists I imagined were recreational cyclists. Our culture has come to see bicycling as a sport rather than as transportation. This helps gives us the feeling that bicyclists are “in the way” rather than fellow travelers on city streets. People think “Bicyclists are just out there for fun and they should get out of the way because we motorists have important things to do”. (I’ve actually had motorists tell me this.) So this view may help explain why a motorist will wait patiently behind a left-turning car but they become enraged when they have to wait to pass a bicyclist.

And notice a third assumption I made: the cyclists were men. I think because most American cyclists are men, cycling here has come to be seen as an aggressive pursuit. I think as more women and children bike we’ll see that attitude change. If I had to pass two women or two kids biking side-by-side I don’t think I’d assume they were making a statement and being purposefully rude.

So this whole issue is kinda schizophrenic. You are a cyclist yourself. And I am a driver sometimes. Heck, some of my best friends are motorists . So unlike the civil rights movement in which a black person could never be a white person or vice versa, we can see each others’ points of view on a daily basis. I am hopeful that this ability will lead to a transportation system that works for everyone.

If you want to read a hardcore cyclist’s point of view in a traffic situation similar to your own, check out this  blog post. I think I might pick up Fighting Traffic, the book he mentions. He writes about the book:

Automobile interest groups and drivers wrestled the purpose of streets from everyone else, often by bloody force (200,000 Americans were killed on roads in the 1920′s, a majority were pedestrians back then). It was not uncommon in the early decades of automobiles on the streets for newspapers to depict the typical driver as Satan, and mass memorial services for slain children were common in urban places. Safety campaigns eventually brought down the proportion of pedestrian fatalities, but in the process began to highly limit what had been previously very liberal rights to those who walked in cities.

More of My Big Manly Cargo Bike Loads

Guess what is in this 50-pound monster pannier.

Us cargo bikers get a thrill out of telling everyone what big loads we can carry (see Their Carrying Capacity and My Carrying Capacity). I am no exception. Here are some of my latest big loads.