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Bus roofs are much better for solar than compact cars and you have a use for that incidental power in a way a car does not.

As for the car, I imagine people will burn the energy and more by turning on the air conditioning when they get into their hot car that they intentionally parked in the sun.

Did you glue(/etc) the panels to the roof or did you have to mount them on standoffs?

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I used VHB tape underneath and Eternabond tape over seams to prevent wind from getting underneath - each 60w panel is 2-3 pounds so very light compared to more common panels that need to be structurally mounted to the frame.

Sounds pretty nice and fairly foolproof.

I remember seeing my first solar panel leaning against an old blue and white school bus at a music festival somewhere on the west coast, decades ago. They had a bunch of old auto batteries for storage.

> turning on the air conditioning

You could cool it a bit with a Stirling engine and get a little more power from the overheated interior. ;-)

And you could use some of the extra heat in hot air balloons to offset the weight of all the Stirling engines.

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