SUNSEEKER

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In Folder: Mechanical Solar Tracking System (Sunseeker)

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SUNSEEKER

Senior Design Showcase project, Wentworth Institute of Technology, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2020

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title: SUNSEEKER

creator: Mordecai Choi, Jonathan Le, Badr Badreg

subject: Solar panel, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Finite Element Analysis (FEA), energy, and efficiency

description: Solar energy is a clean, renewable source of energy and has gotten increasingly popular in the last 20 years as panels are being developed to be less expensive and more efficient. To maximize Solar energy gathering capability, the panels must be positioned perpendicular to the sunlight path. Currently, to simplify construction and minimize cost, panels are either placed horizontally or flat on the roof line of a home. This results in lower power generation to accommodate lower installation, lower maintenance costs, and reduce structural loads induced by wind. Our capstone group developed a solar tracking system that includes an automation control system to automatically adjust the panels for optimum solar incidence angel. This continuous angle adjustment improves efficiency and substantially increases energy harvest over stationary panels. Due to the global pandemic, the team was unable to build the prototype and test, instead our team evaluated the structural stability of the design with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to verify structural integrity in a heavy wind loading environment. These analyses support structural design verification under real world conditions while enabling harnessing energy from the sun in a more efficient way than conventionally mounted solar panels.

publisher: The Douglas D. Schumann Library and Learning Commons, Wentworth Institute of Technology

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date: 2020

type: Presentation

format: video recording

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language: eng

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rights: https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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