Solar-powered rickshaws called green rickshaws were introduced in Chandni Chowk here on Thursday as part of a pilot project. Each of these rickshaws costs about Rs.17,000 and the idea is to have them in place of the man-pulled rickshaws.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Union Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, who is the Member of Parliament from Chandni Chowk.
The green rickshaws weigh about 210 kg each and are able to run at a speed of 15 to 20 km per hour.
They operate on solar battery that is expected to last 70 km on a single charge. These batteries take about five hours to be charged with the help of solar panels that are to be connected to the charging unit. Most of these charging units are being set up above Delhi Metro stations.
As these rickshaws would have to go to the charging station for replacement of existing battery, they would ply within a radius of 3 km from the metro stations.
For the full story, click on:
http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/03/stories/2008100354590400.htm
Muralidhar Rao
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Comments
Really solar?
I appreciate that this is being done with good intentions but the engineer inside me is not very convinced.
Let me try to do a crude estimate on how much of the energy for these rickshaws is really coming from solar.
Reva needs 9.66 kWh charge for a range of about 75 kms. Assuming these rickshaws need half the energy and do about 75km a day (conservative), that is about 5kWh.
If the charging time is 5 hours, the charging power is 1 kW. The 'average day time' solar flux in Delhi throughout the year is about 400 W/m2 and the typical solar cell efficiency is 12%. That means you need about 20.8 m2 solar panel for each rickshaw to charge only with solar. That number is not a nice looking one (in spite of making all assumptions in these rickshaws' favour).
So basically these are electric rickshaws that 'also' use solar power. I would have been glad if they just called them electric vehicles and got rid of the solar component so that the commercial feasibility was higher.
-Shastri
-Shastri
Solar ?? Electric..