Description
Solarflux is a technological company developing solar concentrators to provide clean thermal energy. The issue that Solarflux is facing is the high installation cost of trenching in order to connect their concentrator to the grid for power. Therefore, Solarflux is looking into design alternatives to provide off-grid power to their product. Our capstone team is collaborating with Solarflux to help address this issue by designing a system to provide their solar concentrators with off-grid power. The goal of our final design is to provide Solarflux with 115 VAC of renewable, off-grid power via a photovoltaic (PV) solar powered system that will be attached to their flagship product. Our system will be powering the concentrator's motor for sun tracking, and control system for operations. This means that we must be able to have enough solar power during the day to operate the system at peak power, as well as enough stored power to maintain system operations during the night, as well as any minimal sunlight event. The scope of our project is to design a solar powered system able to operate at a peak power of 200W, to supply enough battery storage for 2 to 3 days worth of stored power while maintaining healthy battery life, to develop a means of attaching our system onto the existing concentrator's design, and to provide our client with electrical schematics and wind loading analysis to demonstrate the practicality of our design. Our proposed solar powered system consists of 10 solar panels collecting our DC power, a charge controller to regulate the voltages being outputted from the panels, 4 batteries to provide 14.4 kWh of storage, an inverter that will convert our power to 115 VAC to feed into the concentrator, and fuses where necessary to avoid dangers of electrical overload. This system has a minimum 10 year life expectancy with light maintenance required, and easy manufacturability as one cohesive product for our client.
Solarflux
Solarflux is a technological company developing solar concentrators to provide clean thermal energy. The issue that Solarflux is facing is the high installation cost of trenching in order to connect their concentrator to the grid for power. Therefore, Solarflux is looking into design alternatives to provide off-grid power to their product. Our capstone team is collaborating with Solarflux to help address this issue by designing a system to provide their solar concentrators with off-grid power. The goal of our final design is to provide Solarflux with 115 VAC of renewable, off-grid power via a photovoltaic (PV) solar powered system that will be attached to their flagship product. Our system will be powering the concentrator's motor for sun tracking, and control system for operations. This means that we must be able to have enough solar power during the day to operate the system at peak power, as well as enough stored power to maintain system operations during the night, as well as any minimal sunlight event. The scope of our project is to design a solar powered system able to operate at a peak power of 200W, to supply enough battery storage for 2 to 3 days worth of stored power while maintaining healthy battery life, to develop a means of attaching our system onto the existing concentrator's design, and to provide our client with electrical schematics and wind loading analysis to demonstrate the practicality of our design. Our proposed solar powered system consists of 10 solar panels collecting our DC power, a charge controller to regulate the voltages being outputted from the panels, 4 batteries to provide 14.4 kWh of storage, an inverter that will convert our power to 115 VAC to feed into the concentrator, and fuses where necessary to avoid dangers of electrical overload. This system has a minimum 10 year life expectancy with light maintenance required, and easy manufacturability as one cohesive product for our client.