UC Merced

The challenge of meeting the corporate averagefuel economy (CAFE) standards of 2025 is leading to majordevelopments in the transportation sector, not the least of whichis the utilization of clean energy sources. Solar energy as a mainsource of on-board fuel has not been extensively investigated.This paper reports on the usage of solar energy fortransportation and investigates the extended driving range, theeconomic value, and the energy return of investment (EROI) ofadding on-board photovoltaic (PV) technologies to plug-inelectric vehicles (EV). The study develops a comprehensive PVsystem model and optimizes the solar energy to DC electricalpower output ratio for on-driving mode. In times of no-use, theproposed system transforms into a flexible energy generationsystem that can be fed into the grid and used to power DCelectrical devices in homes and offices. The results show that byadding on-board PVs to cover less than 50% of the projectedhorizontal surface area of a typical passenger EV, up to 50% ofthe total daily miles traveled by a person in the U.S. could bedriven by solar energy. For the lifetime driving cost, even withlow electricity price (0.13 $/kWh), adding on-board PV shows apositive impact if the system is operating in high solar energyenvironment (e.g. Arizona). If the electricity price is high ((0.35$/kWh), there is positive economic impact even in low solarenergy environments (e.g. Massachusetts). The energy paybacktime (EPBT) is found in a range 3.5-4.8 years, depending onwhere the system operates and energy return of investment(EROI) is between 6.2 to 8.6 times.