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The solar bus on a lawn in the 21st century.
More often than not, at some point in our lives, our brains produce an outrageous idea. Some more outrageous than others; ranging anywhere from mixing cream cheese with soda to painting a 1980’s bus green, slapping solar panels on it, and going on an educational rampage throughout America. The latter may seem slightly more outrageous than the former, but I don’t think Gary Beckwith even drinks soda; I doubt the carbon emissions produced from the beverage would make him particularly happy.
In 2003, Mr. Beckwith snatched up a 1982 Crown school bus, tore out the upholstery, poured some vegetable oil and biodiesel fuel in it, latched on some solar panels, and painted it a nice “Environmentally-Friendly Green.” It certainly wasn’t cheap, though.
“We continue to fix things and improve things and the cost of maintaining a bus is quite high. A single tire is $250, and we have 6 of them.”
With great power, comes great responsibility.
My main interest was regarding the use of Gary’s concept in a more mainstream environment. Why aren’t our public buses using veggie oil, biodiesel fuel, and solar energy to power the vehicles? I asked Gary.
“There is no reason why these fuels shouldn’t be used more for public transportation.”
And there isn’t. Consider the same thing we have now, except cheaper, more efficient, and not world-eating. Curious.
No, the bus isn’t fully powered by photovoltaics (solar panels). Though that sounds ideal, it may remain within the misleading clouds of idealism for a good while. Gary?
“Well, to power a big bus solely off photovoltaics would be pretty tough. First, you’d need to replace the motor with an electric motor and install many heavy batteries. Then, there are two ways to use PV to keep the batteries charged. You could try to load the roof with solar panels, but that would only work if you drove the bus infrequently, with lots of time to charge and not very much driving. A better way, would be to have a separate solar charging station, where you’re not limited by the size of the roof of the bus for the solar panels. Then you could have a larger array and you could drive the bus up to the station daily for charging.”
Sounds to me like the world needs to invest in some serious industrial-scale solar energy production.
Check out the Solar Bus website, or contribute to the cause and buy some karma/self-respect!
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