Community Based Projects

Stan Wrzeski

Brent Haddad

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Graduate Student Projects                                             

Andrea Chialastri: Solar Window            

Andrea is currently working on testing the efficiency and performances of a solar window, as well as on designing the next generation. The current prototype has been developed by the startup company SolarPath, based on a patent by Dr. Narinder Kapany, and it can be used for passive space heating and cooling of both residential and commercial buildings.

The window is composed of a double pane glass, with photovoltaic louvers in between, and two vents at the top and bottom of the frame, through which air is circulated by small fans from the outside to the inside of a building. The system is able to generate both electricity and heat, which are provided by solar radiation captured within the double glazing, and it is energy self-sufficient.

Santa Cruz Coastal Renewable Energy Project

Undergraduate Senior Capstone Projects

The Nanogrid Project

• Our Project
  The Nanogrid is a scaled-down physical representation of the power grid.  The purpose of the project is to provide a system that mimics the actual power grid and can be used as an educational tool in the future for students in the UCSC Power Engineering courses.  The project explores traditional topics such as fault detection and power factor correction, but also more forward-thinking "smart grid" concepts such as load shedding.  The end result will be a complex system of multiple generation sources and loads where data is collected at each bus and fed into a master microprocessor which can execute system-level commands such as load balancing. 
   
  The link below is of single bus, single generation source demonstration..  Viewers can see how the system both prioritizes loads based on generation available and also how ground faults, implemented using switches, are handled.
   
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytLR9w0X_Uc

   

•  Team Members

  Team Lead: Stephen Jackson

  Vice Lead: Dustin Bennie

  Treasurer: Seth Cochran

  Administrator: Adrian Unkeles

  Advisers: Paul Naud, John Vesecky

   

Mobile Solar Charging Station

• The purpose of this project is to create a mobile charging station that generates and stores the output energy through the use of solar panels to charge an electric lawn mower via an AC wall outlet. The system will be controlled by an onboard microcontroller, able to measure the solar irradiance, energy generation from the solar panels, the lawn mower’s current and voltage ratings, and switching control, and record the measurements through an onboard SD card. The microcontroller will also control DC motors to position the PV panels referenced to the sun for maximum power output. There will also be an accessible general user interface to monitor the power ratings. A major goal for this system is a robustness enabling it to be used on such other platforms as truck beds and trailers.

Zach Graham