Man crosses Canada on a strictly solar-powered trike
By Boundary Sentinel
Rick Small, a Thunder Bay resident, cruised through Grand Forks this week on his custom-made, solarized, e-trike.
The trike has two sets of three, 16 volt panels to give him 288 watts to power the trike. Small says he is self-taught and it took him about 40 hours to build the trailer and another 24 hours to adapt the solar panels.
Small left Ontario on July 31 and plans on being in Victoria before the snow starts to fly.
He says he could have been in Victoria much sooner if the conditions had been slightly different.
First, he said having a lighter trike would have made a difference. He also didn’t bring the wall charger so he travelled 6,300 km without plugging it in. A fourth factor is that he didn’t have the panels tilted at the start of the trip and feels if he had done that the whole time he would have shaved off a couple weeks. The last factor is the voltage on his solar panels. If they were more powerful he would have had more power.
Small averages about 50 km a day and expects to be in Victoria in about 10 days as long as the days are sunny. He plays on spending the winter on the West Coast and is in no hurry to return home.
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