(Tan) Solar for Full-Scale Futran

Week5:                                      Pros and Cons of Three Main Solar Panels Currently, we have three main solar panels that are widely used throughout the world. There are monocrystalline silicon solar panels, polycrystalline silicon solar panels, and thin-film solar cells (Eric Rosenfeld). 1) Monocrystalline Silicon Solar: (pros) efficiency of 15-20%, it has the highest efficiency of the different types of solar panels, a long life span, and produces the most efficient result under low light conditions. (cons) it is the most expensive among the three types of solar panel 2)Polycrystalline: (pros) cost less compared to monocrystalline silicon solar panels. efficiency of 13-16% (cons) They require more space in order to produce the same amount of power output compared to monocrystalline. 3)Thin film: (pros) they are aesthetically appealing due to the ability to...

Week 4:                                     Solar Panel Racking Design For this week, I continued reading the existing research  and  related projects to have a better picture of the solar panel racking design and to find a solution for solar panel position. In term of racking design for solar panel, since we have to build a 18m long track that only have two supported poles at each end of the track, my team and I thought that it would be better to change the direction of the roof rack so that the weight of the roof would act upon the two supported poles rather than along the tracking itself. To have a better visualization, the following sketch can explain it all. In addition, the new design could help support an upward force on the track. Therefore, the track would be more stable.  For solar panel position, the best solution is to have a curved design with an tilted angle of...

Week3: Calculation of Solar Position  For this week, my personal task was to understand how to calculate the radiation received by a Photovoltaic (PV) panel and how to calculate the solar position. Based on the amount of radiation, I would be able to decide the angle of solar panel. There are four main steps to calculate the radiation received by a solar panel. They are direct radiation calculation, adding diffuse radiation, subtracting the cloud effects, and subtracting the shading effects (Francois). From the calculated radiation, I would be able to calculate for the solar position. It was a long calculation process; however, I found other tools such as NOAA’s web page  http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/codesandalgorithms/links.html  to run the calculation based on Bird and Hulstrom’s model, Bras model, and Ryan and Stolzenbach’s model. In addition, there are other files from the website allow me to calculate the local times of sunrise, sunset, dawn, etc.  ...

Week 2: For the first week meeting, I was assigned to my sub team, which is solar for full scale futran section. I talked to my team to address some issues from the previous design and what we can do to improve the design. I reviewed previous design files  that Dr. Furman share with my team. I also did some research on solar panels and read some related papers to broaden my knowledge on the solar design that my team and I are going to work on.  In addition, I helped construct my team's goals and addressed some potential challenges that we will need to overcome to achieve our goals. Even though it was the first week meeting, I already created my team temporary gantt chart. The purpose of the gantt chart is to schedule my team's work to make sure we will get things done on time.

 ABOUT ME:    Hi all, My name is Tan, nickname is tangent. My major is mechanical engineering because, throughout my life, I have been interested in knowing how things work. When I was younger, my playground was a jumble of broken appliances and electrical toys that I collected from my neighbor's houses. My parents never bought me toys. Instead, I had to make my own toys from scratch. I remember the first toy I that made was a battery that connected to a light bulb. I was so excited to see the bulb light up that I became curious about how it worked.  Later on, when I went to high school, I developed a habit of making toys from electrical trash. When I had a day off from school, I spent hours disassembling broken appliances and took the parts to use for my toys. Sometimes, I just opened them up to look at the beautiful circuits inside the broken appliances. I started with simple toys like fans, flashlights, and motorboats. Eventually, I progress to bigge...