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Final Iteration with 3 solar panels
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Web App Screen Image
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3D Design Parts
Inspiration
We were inspired to do this project after closely following up the renewable energy market trends. Especially Tesla's newly acquired Solar City was one of our biggest motivations to do our ESE 350 Project about solar energy. Given there is an increasing market trend in renewable energy sector, we wanted to explore in what way we can optimize the current methods and designs. After doing research in the area we found that it would be very useful to add the 2 dimension mobility element to solar panel design while doing our project.
What it does
Sunny Energy introduces the 2 axis rotating solar panel design that is also combined with a web app to keep track of power output.We wanted to design a setup that has a moving structure, in both horizontal and vertical plane using 2 standard servo motors that can turn 180 degrees in each plane. This as we guessed increased the voltage output. The non rotating solar panel average voltage output was 3.2 V whereas rotating solar panel reading on average was as high as 4.8 V which yields about 50 % more power output. Given the growing trend in IOT device design we wanted to implement a web app feature to our project. We designed our own web app for that reason to keep track of the solar power that is produced and to have a remote control capability. A major advantage of having our own website was that we have now the full control over the system.
How we built it
We build our project using an Mbed, 6 standard servo motors, custom designed joint and base parts that we built using the 3D printers at Penn Engineering, Arduino, custom designed rod for the artificial sun generation . We also used a Beaglebone black with WiFi to have our web app connected to the solar panels to keep track of the power generation as well as to have the remote control capability that retracts the solar panels with one click of a button on the app to control their positions in the case of extreme weather conditions to shut them down remotely.
Challenges we ran into
Throughout the project we found the algorithm design most challenging to accomplish. The reason for that was Mbed was not a familiar processor for us before and also we had mechanical pieces that we need to take into account in terms of oscillations and movements. Thus finding the optimum algorithm and making sure we spot the most power outputting angle was the most challenging part that we learned through completing the project. Another biggest challenge was the web app design for the project initially we looked in various methods to complete this reach goal of our project. We used a Beaglebone since it has an analog to digital converter that was needed for us to have the serial communication between the solar power readings and the remote control feature.
What's next for Sunny Energy
Even though we did not have enough time during this final project, we could implement LoRa to our project as we learned in the discussions we had in the class, We could implement that to create the communication between the solar panels in a city setting. In the long run our goal is to have a large network of solar panels that can create an alternative for the current electricity generation methods based on fossil fuels. In addition we are planning on creating a personalized webpage for the solar panel owner to let him/her keep track of their power outputs and give them the chance to turn it on or off. This will give more freedom and better user experience through using an IOT feature.
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