New Members

It has been an exciting second week for the Michigan Tech Solar Car team. We received the wonderful news that our team membership grew 100% so now we have 6 enthusiastic members as we go into our design phase. Our new members are Joe Rushing, Jonathon Crowe (J.R.), and Christian Rose. Check out their bios and the bios of previous members here.

We are moving right along in the semester in terms of our solar car project and the larger Alternative Fuels Group (AFG) Enterprise. This week the larger Enterprise welcomed John Leinonen as a presenter for the Michigan initiative SmartZones. They work closely with universities in an attempt to use commercially viable enterprises to establish small businesses and work opportunities in the surrounding communities. He was very interested in a few of the projects that AFG is currently working on; in particular our smaller scale localized energy generation projects. Hopefully this opportunity pans out and an AFG project has the chance to positively affect our community in a big way. For more information on each of the SmartZones check out this interactive map.

Also in the news this week is the relief effort for Haiti. Of particular interest to our group and something that is getting more media attention is the use of solar technology to help in the recovery effort. MSNBC’s Cosmic Log has a great article on how solar technology is helping the survivors pump fresh water, cook food, keep schools running, and provide medical attention to the wounded. Since the local infrastructure has been destroyed solar energy allows for the production of power onsite for immediate use. Solar energy is the perfect solution to Haiti’s power needs. The country is one of the sunniest in the world and has long been considered one of the best places to attempt to produce a solar energy economy. I hope one day the country will be stable enough to show the world the viability of solar energy technology even for impoverished nations. This relief effort may be a small first step towards that kind of energy independence but the focus should remain on providing services for the survivors. I am happy to say that solar energy is and will continue to be a large part of that effort. Read the MSNBC article here.

I hope to bring more information about our efforts next week as we continue to get the new members up to speed and set our vision for the semester. I hope you all have a great week and thanks for reading.

~Dan

Hello

Hello and welcome to the first ever blog by the Michigan Tech Solar Car Team! We had our first meeting of the semester yesterday and it was great to see some new faces in the Alternative Fuels Group Enterprise. Hopefully a few of them will be interested in joining our project and we will update our roster next week accordingly.

This semester is going to be a big one for our team as we are planning to move forward quickly in the modeling stage of our design. Our plan is to have a few weeks of brainstorming and housekeeping to get any new members up to speed and assess their skills to more effectively break up the work load. Then we will move right into modeling; keeping our design very fluid so we can address issues as they arise (and for sure they will). Then finally by the end of this semester we would like to have manufactured or bought at least one part that will for sure be a component of the vehicle. The team will have other responsibilities and tasks during that time but the above is our very general breakdown of what we would like to accomplish this semester.

On the sponsorship front we are continuing to pursue leads generated from last semester. The holidays slowed us up a little as it became very hard to communicate with potential sponsors over that time. Also, the team is working closely with our Enterprise program and our Alumni office to get our Adopt-a-Cell program off the ground so individual donations can be realized easily. Our goal from last semester was to have 10% of our budget by March and the team is working very hard to achieve that.

Finally an update on the R/C car; a week before the holiday break we received the parts we ordered to construct a radio controlled solar car. The idea was that this car could be a proof of concept as well as a nice interactive recruiting tool at the Undergrad Expo. So far we have stripped down the R/C car and constructed a working solar array. The array produces enough power under indoor lighting to run all of the LEDs and the speaker (yes the car makes engine noises and even plays music!), but not enough to run the motors. The team has yet to take it outside for testing but we expect much better results.

That is a little bit about where the team is at right now. I hope to update this regularly every week so continue to stop by or follow us and check out our official website at:

http://www.enterprise.mtu.edu/afg/solar.htm

See you next week,

~Dan