AC Photovoltic cells and posibility of AC power storage?

[industrialphreak]

It may be another pipe dream folks but what is your thoughts about Alternating current ebikes?

No I am not talking about having a 40 Mile extension cord on a bicycle trailer or any other ridiculous things like that.

Thinking in line of Tesla and his AC systems. In a round about way it brought me to the topic of sustainable energy production. Right now we convert DC energy into AC power wasting a lot of energy in circuitry in the conversion process.

We could do that or possibly start harnessing waste RF energy on existing high tension power lines. But I dont think our utilities companies or powers that be will be to happy about that.

My idea is to develop different photo-voltac cells that respond to different light spectrum's of natural light to produce a native AC signal.

What would be involved with going this route?

Here is some more brain porn courtesy of the US department of energy and the NREL to get your neurons firing.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/26085.pdf


Here you guys go http://youtu.be/bIcihV17o5U

 

[16v4nrbrgr]

Photovoltaic cells produce DC current which must be run through an inverter to produce AC current, which is a source of conversion loss. AC is the preferred method of power transmission by utilities because it requires less voltage to compensate for resistive losses in the wires (which also requires smaller wires, and less transformer stations), but on a bicycle it wouldn't really be a benefit. The auto manufacturers are using AC motors which have a better efficiency because the power from the controller is pulsed via sine wave vs by a DC pulse width modulator which chops the current in a square wave, which makes the motors able to produce more torque for their size, which can then be geared longer to achieve higher wheel horsepower and speeds. A typical AC motor you will find used in most power tools uses resistive loss as the means of power regulation, with either a variable potentiometer or a bypass circuit through a power resistor that just wastes the excess current not going through the motor.

If you feel up to the engineering task of creating an AC photovoltaic cell, which currently does not exist, you already know this of course. lol