Asklemmy

43716 readers

1575 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Whats a current obstacle or challenge in your life you'd like to share and have people brainstorm for solutions? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by cheese_greater@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

69 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If we can avoid massive collective issues that would be appreciated as there is very little agency the individual has to address those and that helpless ess can often extend to the more solvable individual matters we all grapple with but also occasionally rise to conquer.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

https://www.reddit.com/r/VanLife/comments/1avrsbd/rooftop_solar_tracker/

Looks like someone out there had the same idea.

https://www.roboteos.com/shop

They're currently selling a packaged system for ~$5k, which is a bit pricey, but maybe worth if you're full time on the van life. Looks like you could probably fit 2 of these units on a typical roof, obstructions permitting. Alternatively you could do one tracker and one flat unit.

It looks like ground based 2-axis tracking systems can be found for ~$500-1k, you'd just need to bring your own expertise to mount it to the roof and program the controls yourself.

Semi-unrelated: others mentioned painting your van white (which you already have) but I'll raise you one better - consider painting it with an IR-Emissive cooling paint, e.g., https://i2cool.com/

There's unfortunately few products on the market at this time, but keep your eyes peeled.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Oof, 5k? Thanks for the insight

Edit: On further reading, I noted that the package is 400 watts of solar.

I got approx 1kw on my roof and 9.6kw of batteries, so.. five-figures dollars 😬

The original plan was extending to about 1.5kw, but then I thought having tiltable 1.5kw will be significantly better

That's why I decided to tackle the tilting problem first.

Thanks for bringing roboteos on my radar.