First Solar Powered eBike on the Block!

Four Corners

Four Corners

Member
Rolling slowly toward SW Colorado is a truck bearing my ebike, a Biktrix Juggernaut FS. It started out 1200 miles due north of here in Saskatoon, then it veered puzzlingly to the southeast until it got to Cincinnati OH, which is 1500 miles east of here. There the truck rested for a while, gathering strength to conquer the plains and go up and down the Rocky Mountains a whole bunch. I hope it gets here before winter.

More later!
 
Welcome to the forum, Four! :)

I guess you're not going to be able to ride that new bike at night much.

Seriously, tell us about the solar power deal.
 
Mtl_Biker said:
Welcome to the forum, Four! :)

I guess you're not going to be able to ride that new bike at night much.

Seriously, tell us about the solar power deal.
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Solar-powered, Mtl, as you know, does not necessarily mean running directly off PV panels. My house is off-grid and solar-powered via storage batteries. Innumerable electrons from the sky go begging when the batteries are fully charged, and they often are. Why buy gas for the car to go to town (eight miles) when I can ride for free (sort of)?

I do a lot of single-track on my acoustic bike, but I'm not comfortable with taking the electric bike on those trails; however, old stock driveways and gravel and logging roads galore beckon.

This Jugg FS will be my first ebike, if it ever gets here; it is languishing in Denver now. I expect to learn a lot from the experience and to learn what I should have got instead, but I think it will be "good enough", maybe "really good enough".
 
Sounds like their homestead is solar powered, therefore re-charging the bikes battery pack from that source.

Which would make it a Solar Powered Bike.

Just my own ASSumption! tim
 
Yes—have a home solar system with battery storage that supplies actually more power than we use. So both our electric car and my Domane + are 100% solar powered!
 
I guess there is an implied assumption there that you can always make it back home from any trip without recharging. :)
 
Steve Porter said:
Yes—have a home solar system with battery storage that supplies actually more power than we use. So both our electric car and my Domane + are 100% solar powered!
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Well, you had me thinking your bike was actually solar powered as you'd said. :) Probably more accurate to say something like charged by solar, because the bike is still actually being powered by the battery (which is then charged by solar).
 
Mtl_Biker said:
Well, you had me thinking your bike was actually solar powered as you'd said. :) Probably more accurate to say something like charged by solar, because the bike is still actually being powered by the battery (which is then charged by solar).
Click to expand...

Speaking of solar-powered... the Electric Bike Company has been working on a folding solar panel that is easy to transport and can be laid out to charge when you're away from your normal charging location. It's supposed to charge the battery enough in an hour to get you another 10 miles of range, which is pretty decent for a folding panel considering the size of their cruisers!

I should be getting my hands on one soon, I'll be sure to post about it once I get to try it out and we may even do an EBR review of it :)
 
Mtl_Biker said:
Well, you had me thinking your bike was actually solar powered as you'd said. :) Probably more accurate to say something like charged by solar, because the bike is still actually being powered by the battery (which is then charged by solar).
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Oh, come on! This is a point too fussy for me, and I'm really fussy.
 
Four Corners said:
Oh, come on! This is a point too fussy for me, and I'm really fussy.
Click to expand...
It's really hard to use the juice from a solar panel directly for anything without involving a battery to even out and/or store the power. Therefore, by your strict standard scarcely anything (except the planet!) is solar powered.
 
Four Corners said:
It's really hard to use the juice from a solar panel directly for anything without involving a battery to even out and/or store the power. Therefore, by your strict standard scarcely anything (except the planet!) is solar powered.
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However, now that I think about it, passive solar space heating fully qualifies as directly solar powered. I designed and built a house near here in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado which was 100% passive solar and lived in it for fourteen years. No heating or cooling bills at all once the structure reached thermal equilibrium. So, I retreat from my earlier position.
 
Back in the mid 80"s, I had a 72 Lincoln MK IV & a 72 Coupe Deville

Kept in the garage driven alternate weekends in the summer.

if they sat for more than 2-weeks, they would need a jump to start.

I bought 2 solar powered battery minders from JC Whitney.
They plugged into the cigarette lighter, and kept the car, and they worked!

They would charge when I would have the lights on in the garage, or the daylight falling in from the windows or doors being open.

used the chargers for years, and they went with the cars, when I sold them.

tim


38370
 
Four Corners said:
Update:

Only three hundred miles to go but mostly mountains. Terrible things can happen in the mountains!
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My new bike is stuck in Denver for the last three days. I called DHL Express (!) to ask when it will be here. Just three more days, they said. Let's see, three plus three equals six. Six days to go three hundred miles. That's fifty miles/day. DHL could easily pedal it here in the same time. The exercise would do them good, and think of the environmental benefits!
 
Four Corners said:
My new bike is stuck in Denver for the last three days. I called DHL Express (!) to ask when it will be here. Just three more days, they said. Let's see, three plus three equals six. Six days to go three hundred miles. That's fifty miles/day. DHL could easily pedal it here in the same time
Click to expand...
I live 6 miles from the UPS national air hub. There are advantages: like I get surface rate UPS packages from 800 miles in 16 hours. Amazon warehouse is 4 miles away, their stuff often comes 8 hours after ordered. I have a glass fiber internet drop 2 blocks away; no more lightning strikes on my modem. We have a symphony orchestra within biking distance of my house! KET broadcast television & WUOL-FM are jewels. No cable TV or dish fees.
Downsides? It rains & clouds over too much here to make solar electricity pay off. Sometimes weeks at a time, which makes battery use problematic.
 
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