A Moving Solar Roof for a Hybrid Solar Vehicle

A study on the benefits of a moving solar roof for parking phases in a Hybrid Solar Vehicle is presented. A kinematic model of a parallel robot with three degrees of freedom has been developed and validated over the experimental data obtained by a small scale real prototype. The effects of roof design variables are analyzed, and the benefits in terms of net available energy assessed by simulation over hourly solar data at various months and latitudes. The structure of a model based control to achieve the optimal orientation of the solar roof is also presented.