| HN Mirror

It is a drop in the ocean. 1 square meter of surface receives at most 1kWh of energy from the sun, and that's only at the equator, on clear day, and without taking any conversion losses into equation.

But for the sake of fun - For a Bombardier Q400(that was the only reliable data I could find)[0], the total surface area is ~213 square meters. That's obviously total surface area, so it includes both the top and bottom of the airplane. For simplicity sake, let's say only half is in full view of the sun - so 107 square meters.

Even if we assume magical solar panels that can actually convert 100% of the energy into electricity, and assume that the plane is flying in full daylight, that's only ~100kW.

The aircraft uses two PW100 engines, each producing....3700kW, so the total output of the aircraft is around 7400kW.

So even if the conditions were ideal, we had magical solar panels, and covered every inch of the aircraft, they would produce....less than 1% of power necessary to fly it. To be fair, a normal 2.0L petrol engine produces more power than what those solar panels would produce.

In reality, those panels could maybe power the onboard lights and computers? Just about?

[0]http://www.supersonicinstitute.org/docs/Q400SurfaceAreaRepor...