Unfortunately , I gotta pop your bubble here somewhat . The theoretical max efficiency for a solar panel is around 40 %. You can theoretically push past that a bit with multijunction solar panels think several thin semitransparent solar panels layered on top of one another but it ' s still nowhere near 100 %. The bigger problem is that sunlight only provides about 100 watts per square foot of energy to begin with . If you figure that a deck is 1 . 5 square foot , that means there ' s a max of 150 watts available to harvest . Your feet and your shadow will take some of that away , so call it 100 watts available . If your solar panel is 20 % efficient a realistic target , especially with a textured grip then you ' re getting 20 watts out of that . So it ' s enough that a constantspeed cruise could be maintained for a longer duration , but not enough for continuous operation . Now if you cover your chest and back with solar panels , you ' d probably get another 50100 watts of usable continuous power out of that , which should be enough to enable continuous travel .