April 2016 Update

Unfortunately, blog posts over the last few months have been rather scant for all members of the Spartan Superway Team. Getting back into the swing of things after returning from Winter Break took some doing, but it seems like the entire team has picked up the pace and everyone is racing to get in the next week or two. This way everyone can get the subgroup projects integrated into the whole, perform bug checks and make sure their part is working as intended. In this regard, the Intermediate Scale Solar Team is no exception.

The better portion of this semester and design cycle was spent redesigning our solar panel mounts. Instead of using the newer MiaSole panels that were donated last academic year we moved to an older model, and recycled some panels from a previous project of our instructor, Ron Swenson. These panels have reduced output compared to the MiaSole panels and were a different size (1 foot by 10 feet instead of 3 feet by 8 feet). We are now using these because they are more appropriate to the size and scale of the Intermediate Team's construction. To sum up, we changed panels to get a more aesthetically appealing look for the Intermediate Scale Model, and to clearly demonstrate that it is solar powered. This led to a lot of redesign work, and a complete overhaul of our deliverable project. This led to a 3 panel module, with 5 total modules to be mounted on the Intermediate Track.

Above are the 3 Panel Module and the Single Panel Mount. Both were drawn 

by David DeOcampo in SolidWorks for this project.

As such, we redesigned our mounts to fit the new panels and fit nicely on the Intermediate Scale Track. We also changed our material from steel and unistrut to plywood and 2x4. This cut down on cost, weight, and eased construction since we would be making a good deal more mounts and modules than previously planned.

Just recently we acquired all our materials and began construction.  As of April 10th we had prototyped a mount and refined the design. After this critical first step in fabrication, we began to mass produce and as of April 18th we had fabricated almost all of the mounts and assembled one module. This recent explosion in progress is due to all of the research and redesign from the beginning of this Spring semester.

The next step is to wire the system, which should be fairly simply accomplished. We have ordered MC4 solar panel connectors to wire the system with, as well as a few MC4 extension cables and branch connectors. Once they arrive this week, with a little bit of prep work, we should be ready to include our system in the Intermediate Scale build.

In the mean time, we are prepared to help the other teams in any way we can to try and finish for MakerFaire near the end of May!

Looking to the End of this Design Cycle

With only a few weeks left to prepare for the end of the semester, design time is running short to finalize our work. Since David DeOcampo and I have been busy working on management duties for Pod Car City 9 and the like it has fallen on the rest of the Intermediate Solar team to do the bulk of the work recently. I'm happy to say they've been doing well without us, but we're excited to get back to work on our solar team to help them push through the last phase of design. Completing a calculator tool is high on the priority list so that we can adapt our system to whatever the other subgroups throw at us, as is completing the mounting design for our solar cells.

Aftermath of Pod Car City 9

Last week the Spartan Superway team hosted students from across the country and engineers from around the world in the Pod Car City 9 Icebreaker event. Some of our colleagues from Southern Illinois University's college of Architecture hosted a Student Design Challenge that we were lucky enough to participate in, and throughout the day we received ample media coverage from local radio stations, foreign news and blogs/podcasts, and even NBC Bay Area. Thanks to all the reporters who showed up to give our project some exposure, and to San Jose State's Media Relation Specialist Robin McElhatton for making it all possible. Special thanks to Riya Battacharjee and Scott Budman for the great piece they produced for NBC Bay Area.

Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

In recent weeks the Spartan Superway Management Team has been working on applications for the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in hopes of securing some extra funding for the team. The initial application was accepted and the group has moved on to the next round of applications for the Drive It! Category. The application was submitted November 3rd and we are eagerly awaiting the results. A reward form this prize could secure more than $10,000 in funding which would be a substantial amount to put toward development.

Update for Recent Weeks

In the past couple of weeks the Spartan Superway has been preoccupied with group presentations; sub-team work time has been limited because of this. Although we have less time to work on our sub-team projects it is really good to know where all the other groups are at with their own work. It also gives us a chance to communicate with the group as a whole which is helpful; it lets us know what information we can expect from other groups as well as what information they expect and need from our own group.

Even presentations taking a good portion of our time has not stopped our own sub-team's progress though! We have members researching configurations, drafting plans for a  mounting system and analyzing different solar cell arrays.

After analyzing a concave, convex, and strictly planar arrangement of cells it turns out that the curvature decreases the amount of energy produced by the cell. Very generous estimation for reflected light absorbed by the cell (about 5%) only marginally increased gains. It is better to exclude reflection from the results for a very important reason: reflected light from a cell is light energy that was lost to the cell; for this reason many modern solar panels are coated with anti reflective layer.

This makes sense, specifically when looking at the MiaSole panels we are using. They are not very reflective due to their thin-film design; a mono- or poly-crystalline panel might have more reflectivity due to its glass base though.

Spartan Daily Coverage! Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Issue - Taking the High Road: Spartans lift transport to new heights

Recently a pair of students from the San Jose State Newspaper, The Spartan Daily, stopped by the SMSSV Design Center and interviewed some members of our team; Michael Hurst, Thomas Nguyen, Dr. Furman, and I took part.

Not only were we featured on the front page of the Spartan Daily, but we also got some great video coverage out of it as well!

Thanks go out to Andrew Cypert and Kavin Mistry, our fellow SJSU classmates, for the video and newspaper coverage.

Process Update - Work Week of 9/16/15

This week the upper management team finalized the roster and got the sub-teams in order; finally time to get our hands dirty with the project! The Solar team has been busy doing preliminary research and brainstorming concepts for improving power collection for the system. As for myself, I did some basic shopping around to see if there was anything available that would fit the bill for large scale modular mounting system for our solar panels; what I found was that most readily available shims have parallel surfaces on either side. Maybe further research will stumble upon some slanted shims that I've envisioned for this purpose, but maybe as a team we will come up with a better system for mounting panels before then.

For now, Ron Swenson would like us to mount some recently acquired thin film, flexible solar cells on the full scale track at the SSDC. We need to accomplish this by 10/1/15. Ivan detailed our mounting idea in his blog and we will be getting materials and trying to implement it in our weekly meeting at the SSDC this Wednesday.