ARE SOLAR POWERED DRONES POSSIBLE?

Solar Powered Drones Possible

Are Solar Powered Drones Possible?

It is not really possible with current technology. This is mainly due to 2 main conflicting factors,

  1. Solar panels are relatively inefficient at collecting energy
  2. Quadcopters use a lot of energy in order to simply stay airborne

Simply take a look at a small quadcopter, the Eachine H8 Mini. There is very little space to mount solar panels on this drone, without even taking into account point 1 above.

If you want to look at mounting solar panels onto drones in general, it would be best to look at fixed wing drones . These drones are very efficient due to the winged design, which allows the drone to glide through the air and only requires minimal energy to move forward. An affordable fixed wing drone such as the X8 Long Range drone would be best, and the large area of the wings allows you to cover it with many solar panels.

While the X8 Long Range Droneis a small fixed wing, with a wingspan of around 2 meters, Facebook has tried mounting solar panels on much larger fixed wing drones. With these drones, it is trying to provide free internet in areas of the globe that suffer from lack of reliable internet connections.