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.

Modular Solar Panel Mounting Scheme

A rough idea for a mounting scheme on each section of track is as follows:

A set of pre-made, pre-designed "shims" or spacers will be manufactured with a bore through them; this bore will allow a threaded rod that is attached to the panel casing to pass though and secure directly to the track though either a pass-through to a nut or a threaded cavity in the rail. 

There can be designed an array or shims that account for a multitude of angles on both axes, connecting to adjacent railway segments, and different situations that could be encountered when designing around geography for the railway. The END and SIDE VIEWS show adjacent sections meeting or a laterally angled section. 

Process Update - Minutes for 9/9/15

• Meeting with the Total Group: the whole group met with Dr. Furman and Ron to discuss the second blog assignment and the leadership roles such as Government Liaison, Industry Liason, Facilities Manager, etc. 
• Leadership Role Coordination: the group broke off on the Rule of Two Feet to find their place in leadership groups; I personally ended up in a combined Liaison Group that will deal with Industry and Government
• SubGroup Havoc: At this point the group broke up into their research groups and started to designate official leaders; some restructuring occurred with the management system; upper management was determined and from there middle and lower management arose. While the subgroups worked on preparing their blog posts for the remainder of the meeting, management worked on logistics and organization of the group 

Automated Transit Networks in the World Today

Podcar transportation is not a new idea; the SMSSV team is only trying to bring it into the renewable energy era. There are a few ATN systems in place around the world already, but none of them draw from a sustainable power source. 

• The Urban Light Transit (ULTra) system has been in place at Heathrow Airport in London since 2011. These podcars are powered by an array of car batteries, which are charged traditionally from a grid source.
• The Suncheon Bay Personal Rapid Transit system was put in place in 2013; this emission free system is designed to protect the fragile nature of a popular tourist destination from pollution. It is, however, powered from an public electricity grid, and not exclusively with a renewable source.
• The oldest and only Personal Rapid Transit system in the United States is West Virginia University's Morgantown PRT.  This system was put in place in the early 1970s and shuttle students between the two campuses of the university. It does not draw from a renewable source and since it has aged considerably it tends to breakdown and require a lot of maintenance.

Although this list is not exhaustive, it does include the oldest and some of the newest ATNs throughout the world. The SMSSV project aims to exceed the specifications of these systems by being completely sustainable, both in energy consumption and in longevity.

Solar Powered Public Transit in the World Today

Sustainable public transportation is the main goal of the SMSSV; as such focus on other solar powered public transit systems that are already in place is a decent start into researching this segment of the project. 

The fastest way to get solar into public transit would be to modify existing means of public transit to utilize solar energy. Both Europe and Australia have done this already, albeit on a small scale. These Perchtoldsdorf, Austria and Adelaide, Australia have solar busses in operation.

•  In the small Australian town of Adelaide, the 'Tindo' brand bus uses wayside power pickup from solar cells on the central bus station; wayside power pickup is something that the SMSSV happens to be interested in. Hopefully this is a solid proof of concept that the SMSSV team can use for inspiration in some way. 
• The Perchtoldsdorf system is a single hybrid-power bus developed by a Wales university; it serves a link between two campuses in Lower Austria. The 'hybrid' nature of it comes from the fact that it is powered not only by the solar cells on its roof, but also by a set of exchangeable batteries that are charged at an outside facility using its own solar cells. 

Overall there does not seem to be a lot of literature concerning public transit systems that are powered solely by solar energy. Major car manufacturers like Nissan and Toyota, along with Elon Musk's innovative Tesla Motor Company, have started manufacturing and selling solely electric powered vehicles. This is a step in the right direction but a fair portion of electric power still comes from non-renewable sources. In addition, it does not deal with another issue that the SMSSV hopes to solve: road overcrowding. By reducing the total number of vehicles on the road and increasing the efficiency of a public transit system there would be less traffic is largely populated areas and decrease the average traveler's power consumption, both on and off the solar powered ATN. 

Process Update - Minutes for 9/2/15

• Meeting with the total group: each member gave a 'lightning' speech about their research into the SMSSV and ATNs
• Touring the Project: the total group then explored the Superway Design Center with some alumni, mentors and directors of the project; we learned in general what has been accomplished and what we are looking to accomplish in a broad sense
• Breaking into Sub-Groups: at this point each member went to an area to discuss their interests and intentions for a specific aspect of the project. some groups included the 1/12th scale model improvement, full-scale mock up improvement, and the solar systems.
• The Solar Team: joined a group composed of Jaymie Zapata, David Deo Campo, and David Luo. took on the role of team lead. exchanged contact information and availability.
• Talking with mentors: the duration of class was spent talking with Ron Swenson and Prof. Burman regarding our goals for the project. after hours in the Alumni and Mentor Meeting spent time talking with James Mokri, instructor of the solar systems SJSU course, and Frank DeWinter, one of the mentor for the project with a wide breadth of professional experience; both of them are important contacts
• Meeting the Solar Systems course group: Prof. Mokri introduced us to a group of students from his course who were interested in working on the SMSSV; exchanged contact information with them and talked about our own projects

A Short Bio

Augustine Soucy is a Senior in the BSME program at San Jose State University involved in the SMSSV project as the Solar Team Lead. As a local from the South Bay and Santa Cruz area the idea of more efficient and effective public transit piqued interest with him when first discovering the Superway project. He hopes to bring a positive attitude and logical thought process to the project and improve on the many ideas left by previous participants of the project. With a background in HVAC, CAD, and fabrication, branching out into Solar research and development should provide ample challenge and a rewarding experience. He chose the Solar aspect of this project because it is one of the main components that will make the system more efficient and revolutionary, but it seems to have been neglected although it is a linchpin of the project.