Early Morning Solar Gadget – Solar Powered Air Conditioned Medical Tent

Gen 2 solar tent

If there is one thing I like, its a good bike ride. There is something about being your own power source and the sheer elegance of a bicycle that makes a bike ride perfect in my book. Seems I am not the only one.

The very clever people at wingnut gear had a problem however. They wanted to go ridding in the desert and needed a way to keep people with heat stroke (as you might get ridding you bike in a desert) cool.

There solution did not involve trucking a bunch of nasty diesel fuel out into the desert and running a loud generator to power some air conditioning, instead they cam up with the Gen 2 solar tent.

Gen 2 solar tent

The solar panels in the early part of the day are used to shade the tent and keep it cool. learned the hard way from Gen 1 not to mount panels directly onto tent if you want to keep cool. Panels can reach up to 120 degrees once generating power. That additional temperature also reduces panel efficiencies.(via)

Gen 2 solar tent
The tent is kept cool with a swamp cooler that runs by evaporating water and blowing a fan over the cool surface.

(from wingnut via eddie o)