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Solar power is the only power we are able to get externally. Battery power is limited, we start with full SOC but the only way to get new energy in is from solar. So the value of battery power tells us the net power of the car (the battery makes up for whatever power the solar can’t). If the battery is providing power we know we are running energy negative, if the battery is gaining power we know we are running energy positive, and if the battery is neither providing nor gaining energy we know we are running energy neutral.
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Since I am interested in comparing the battery power consumption for different p-counts, I am interested in ΔPbat. For the purpose of comparing different parallel configurations, the only values that will make a difference should be power consumed by motors and power loss from pack internal resistance. I will assume solar, regen, PCB power consumption, and all other power loss aren’t dependent on parallel count (I’m going to assume no difference in cooling for now since trying to find actual amount of cooling needed is too tricky to do without doing testing). Based on this assumption, when calculating ΔPbat, Psolar, Ppcb, Plosses (that aren’t IR losses) and Pregen would all be cancelled out.
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This being the case, I’ll still try to include the main power consumers that I can easily find values for so that Pbat is still somewhat in the correct ballpark:
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Power consumed by the motor can be represented using all the power our car needs to overcome to move (acceleration, drag, rolling resistance, gravity when on a gradient). I will also assume a 90% efficiency as a constant.
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