We place solar canopies continuously above podcar guideways running along urban streets and larger arterials, providing reliable energy for mobility. Each passenger station is designed to serve as an energy center, storing energy for cloudy periods and night time, delivering surplus energy to our neighbors, with sufficient storage assets (batteries and a variety of economical, safe stationary storage technologies) to deliver resiliency – managing daily operations and emergency conditions alike.
In this illustration, the solar canopies (from the left and right as well as above the station) capture solar electricity and deliver it along the blue lines to the storage block, from which the electricity is delivered along the green lines to the cabins for rapid charging while they are briefly in the stations dropping off and boarding passengers.
In addition to managing station requirements – lighting and elevators, for example – the surplus may be used to charge (green) micro-mobility bikes and scooters, backup lighting, cell phones, etc.
Surplus electricity can be delivered to the grid and any deficiencies may be recharged with power from the grid along the gray lines.
If any particular station loses power in a large network, the other stations will have sufficient capacity to maintain an adequate state of charge for the entire fleet of vehicles. Unlike a grid-supported network vulnerable to any of several possible single points of failure – central power plants, transmission lines, brown-outs or black-outs – the Solar Skyways™ MicroGrid is always on, resilient to even extreme conditions such as flooding or fuel shortages.
