The PHEBUS 2000 Rally took place in southern France in June 2000, as a three-days, 180 km ride in the Pyrenees.

The scope of this rally is not to make our own WSC here. Rather, we want to show that solar power is available for today's technology. In the WSC the per-team budget iare very high. Of course those sun racers  are handsome, but people think: "Gee it looks great, they can go to Jupiter and back with it, but it won't ever replace my new SUV!"

So, with ENSEEIHT , a scholol of electronics engineering, and CNRS we decided to organise a rally in which converted cars and cheap prototypes can participate, and sun racers too: we got two of them (well, one and a half, see below). Only one thing: the origin of the electricity HAS to be solar for all.

There are now PV-equiped houses in France. We are 250 homes equipped with a total amount of 500 kW worth of grid-tied PV systems. The PV modules used are much more affordable than the 20% efficiency generators covering sun racers. The modules are mostly from Photowatt and Isophoton, the inverters from SMA.  In the most nuclearized country of the world, where 78% of the electricity comes from Uranium, and a monopolistic utility like "Electricité de France", this is some sort of a challenge, but it works and develops. My own system dates from 1997 and has produced 8600 kWh at 230V ac since then.

So we said: let's measure how much the four PV arrays along the rally route will produce during a three days race. The participants will be allowed to recharge their vehicle, but only at (or close to) one of the equipped homes. The energy will be metered. At the end of the race, we will compute the balance and we'll see if the sun has been able to power the whole rally.

There was a big show blocker when in september ‘99 we first had the desire for this event to become reality: the lack of an Authorisation.

in France, like elsewhere, one cannot ride an unlicensed vehicle on a public road, and most of the possible challengers for our race were student teams form universities or "home brew" more or less serious car geniuses. The french authority that delivers licence plates for car prototypes is very picky, expects you to be a big car manufacturer like Peugeot or Renault, and takes a year or so to give an answer. Furthermore, I was told that the road accident statistics in our region were bad, and the authorities would be "veeeery concerned". Looks bad does'nt it?

We  have no experience in lobbying, but we took the problem seriously. The wind blew in the good direction! With the help of the "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" (the French equivalent of the National Science Foundation) Stéphane Astier  and myself and a group of 15 students, finally convinced the "DRIRE" (directeur régional de l'industrie, recherche et environnement) to allow us up to buy ten licence plates, valid for three days only. This was a "première" in France, something utterly unthinkable of just a year before!

We got the answer  in April 2000, just a month and a half before the date decided for the rally. We had spent more than six months of hard work on designing the route, the rules and over all getting the authorisation.  We had not insisted too much on the participants since we did not want them to be blocked at the last minute. So we hurried to our keyboards and called back everybody for a final registration.

Next to the departure line, June 10, 2000, there were ten solar vehicles facing the 12 th century romane cathedral in Mirepoix (Ariège):

-  three electric bicycles by the same manufacturer: Selectric in Paris.

- Buggy solar and Moto Solar: a cart and a motorbike from Barcelona, Spain. Take a look at their web site: www.electromobil.net

- Mini-EL a mini car refurbished from a ten years ago "Tour de Sol" in Switzerland.

- a converted méhari: basically a 2 CV with a plastic body.

- an electric Renault Clio designed as a race car with a 75 kW motor and NiCd batteries. This car has a prototype gear box in which the gears are synchronised during shifts by an electronic servo loop on the motor.

- Soleïada: a sun racer from an electrical ingenieering school in Toulouse (N7), with a mock solar array painted in blue on the tail, as they did not have the funding in time to buy one. However, the wheel engine they designed, built and use compares favourably with the few best ones involved in the WSC.

- Mad Dogs III: a beautiful sun racer from South Bank University, London.

The 120 km route led to Cité de l'Espace, a space museum next to the city of Toulouse. There were four 30 km stages, with two stages in the same day the second day. The route was mostly small roads, open to normal traffic, winding among the foot hills and the tenth century cathare castles.

The usual weather in May and June is sunny and hot in this southmost part of France. We had made survival kits for the participants, featuring mineral water, a cap with a solar fan, road maps and compases.
The real weather that day was pouring cold rain, since the early morning.

Thanks to the global greenhouse effect, the weather forecast was bleak for the whole week-end and turned out to be damn right. The 23 year record breaking flood made the head news in the papers. Not us!

However, for ourselves and with the help of all the people involved in that race we have also proven something I would not have guessed that week-end: Solar vehicles run in the rain! At least those who have a decent protection against water splashes on the electric parts. The grey sky gave us enough energy to power the whole rally for three days across 120 kilometres of hilly roads! The converted race car: the Ranault Clio is the only one to have completed all the stages, the others have skipped  the most stormy kilometers.

Most roads were flooded in the vicinity. Fortunately we had chosen a route on the crests, for the view and for the sun. We got no big view and almost no sunshine, but this high route saved us.

Thanks to the four  grid inertied PV arrays along the road, the energetic balance of the rally has been positive by 5 kWh! The Renault Clio with its oversized motor and full 120 km trip has hogged alone 78% of all the electricity produced by the four systems. The other cars were all lighter and better designed for economy, but less rugged.

See the energy and distance data

and many pictures of the participating vehicles.

We'll try it again this year. Wish us luck with the weather!

You can find pictures and data about the ‘2000 rally on my web site:
http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/people/koechlin/
just pass over the scientific stuff and click on "solar energy" at the bottom of the page.

The Phebus 2001 rally:

It's basically the same thing, with a bit more Pyrenees in it. There is a special area in France, at  1800 m altitude, between Font Romeu and Bourg Madame, in the backcountry  above Perpignan, Spain and the Mediterranean sea.  It has the best sunshine records in the country. There, built in the 1980's, is a huge 25 meter monolithic solar concentrator  that melts almost anything at its 3000 K (Kelvin) focus. It's part of a solar laboratory. The 2001 solar odyssee will start from there. The arrival four days and 200 km later will be at Cité de l'Espace, same as last year. The route is mostly downhill, but sometimes it goes up...

The rally features a solar technology museum at its departure, a space technology museum at the arrival, and plenty of animations, exhibitions and conferences at each stop along the way.

As for June 2000, this May 2001 rally will not be a race, as we would never just think of asking an authorisation for a speed race on an open road here in France. Seriously, speeding on the road is not in the scope of our action, whereas security and reliability is.  However, here will be a competition! There are many ways to challenge people and equipment other than top speed ! There will be prizes too, depending on our funding and sponsors it will be either solar gadgets and a good meal together, or more serious equipment and a ticket to Australia.

We have plans for the future: if things turn out to be too easy downhill, we'll go uphill, conquering the mountains. There are good roads and passes at 2100 m or higher if you want.  South there is Spain, and further south, a whole continent.
 

photo: Jean François Bariteaud (barjf@aero.obs-mip.fr)

Plaquette  and route of the previous rallye in June 2000 (the first of it's kind in France)

what has happened of the rallye phebus 2000

photos  of the rallye phebus 2000.

Energetic balance  of the rallye phebus 2000.