Truckers spend hours in their trucks, often with the sun beating down on them. Most trucks are equipped with air conditioning (and why aren’t all of them you may ask?).

Now there’s a green way for truckers to stay cool. The i-Cool system, designed by a partnership between ICL Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and Nippon Fruehauf Co Ltd. uses photovoltaic batteries that kick in at idle-stop mode. The system uses Mitsubishi Chemical photovoltaic (PV) cells on a Nippon Fruehauf mount that’s fixed to the container of the truck. The batteries store the electricity the panels generate while the truck is moving and use it when the truck isn’t running.

This cool (had to do it) system, released in May 2010, is chock full of savings. It saves around 1.8 liters of light oil per hour when the truck’s not moving, and reduces fuel consumption when it is in the same way a 10 ton truck does. Overall, using the i-Cool system could save approximately 1,500 liters of light oil per year!

This is a long awaited ray of sunshine for an industry hard hit by steadily rising oil prices. The i-Cool is due to be commercially available in early 2012.