Calculating the output power of photovoltaic cells on top of electric and hybrid electric vehicles

This paper investigates the potential output power of a photovoltaic (PV) installation on top of battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Firstly, we discuss the available area on the roof of BEVs and HEVs for deploying PV cells. Secondly, we verify the impact of the curved surface on the available output power of photovoltaics. Furthermore, we discuss the impact of the curved surface and the ambient conditions on the possible alignment of PV cells. Here, we present a method of calculating the effective area of PV cells, useful for PV simulation models and calculating the available output power of PV cells with different longitudinal angles. Finally, we verify our method within experiments and present the results of them, showing that the model predicts the output power of PV cells with an accuracy better than 2.5%.