This site lists some of the electric vehicles converted by members of the Perth branch of the Australian Electric Vehicles Association. The next meeting is 6:30pm Wednesday in the Billings Room at UWA’s Electrical Engineering department.
With some 43 teams (out of a total field of 60 teams) already in Darwin (including two Western Australian school teams this year, Leeming (Hammerhead) and Willetton Senior High Schools) things are beginning to hot up for the Panasonic World Solar Challenge 2007.A melting pot (or given Darwin’s weather, sweat lodge) of teams from around the world, this year’s race is the first to run under new speed restrictions in Australia’s Northern Territory. The front-end teams will be limited to 130km/h, which will lead to a reduction in previous race times. Also, a day’s layover in Alice Springs will help the field to stay a bit closer together than in previous races. New car classes also attempt to make vehicles more like production cars, by requiring passengers and the ability to get into/out of the car unaided.This is the 20th Anniversary World Solar Challenge, which shows that people like Hans Tholstrup (now there’s a man who should have a Wikipedia entry!) were thinking that there were more energy efficient ways of doing things for at least that long, before Al Gore, and the Stern Review. If only the world’s governments and businesses had been listening 20 years earlier!
Here are some of the posts from Doug on Leeming Sungroper’s 2005 expedition.
The traffic on the mailing list is starting to pick up and no doubt the teams are looking at the number of days remaining and trying to work out how they’re going to get everything together in time to get to Darwin for a few weeks before the 21st of October and the start of thePanasonic World Solar Challenge 2007.
This year is likely to see a lot more interest in the contest that’s been running since the first WSC 20 years ago, now that more attention is focused on the environment.
Although the official announcment hasn’t been made, it looks like the teams will at least comprise:
Adventure class:
Challenge Class:
I’m also expecting a Sungroper 3 entry from Leeming Senior High School and Willeton Senior High School with Sungroper 1, assuming all the relevant hurdles can be overcome to get the staff, students and cars to the starting line in Darwin.
Having been on two World Solar Challenges, if you can get a chance to compete in it, go (even if it involves building your own car :). The experience of being amongst teams of very smart people from all over the world all competing against (and at the same time helping) each other in the midst of the relative nowhere of Australia is incomparable.
It looks like Onno is putting Doug’s Sungroper posts up on the official World Solar Challenge web site, so I suggest you look there for further updates (and check out some of the info about the other teams…)
I’m going to gateway some posts from the Leeming Senior High School Sungroper team (Well, more specifically Doug Burbidge, who is with them). Sungroper is a solar car built by the WA Solar Car Association, and has competed in the 2001 and 2003 World Solar Challenges and has had its chassis rebuilt by the Leeming Senior High School Team for the 2005 World Solar Challenge.
I did the voyage from Darwin to Adelaide with the 2001 and 2003 teams.
Doug says:
Morning. Breakfast. Weetbix. Check email. Onno, from the WSC
website, lets me know that he’s putting my email missives up on the
web:
http://www.wsc.org.au/2005/competition/our.teams/Leeming.Sungroper/index.html
At the appointed 8am gathering time, we have far less students than we
did at the same time yesterday — John knew that they would be full of
energy and stay up late the first night or two, and now they have
evidently burned through that initial energy burst. We get a couple of
radio calls from other rooms, letting us know they’ll be a couple of
minutes late.
We gather, and the plan is announced. Some people go shopping for
food, some people go shopping for electronics, some people go to the
track. I, as usual, am with the track group.
I replace the non-conducting wire in the cable leading to our
go-switch-and-speed-knob panel. This does not fix the problem.
Dag-nabit.
Andrew turns up, and plays around with his voltage-and-alarms board.
He wants to glue temperature sensors (the rather technically marvellous
LM35’s) to the batteries, but there’s no suitable glue. So it goes on
the shopping list.
More teams continue to arrive at Hidden Valley through the day,
including Kormilda, Southern Taiwan and Annersley.
We hook the array up to the car, to push some photons into the battery.
Telemetry shows that we’re pushing in 0 Amps, which doesn’t sound like
a good number. We figure that there must be a problem with the current
shunts. (In this modern world, it’s much easier to measure voltage
than current. So when we want to measure a current, we put a very very
small resistance in the wire, and measure the voltage drop across it.
We call it a “shunt” for historical reasons totally unrelated to the
way they work today.) We pull out the
centre battery string and poke around at the shunts, and eventually
become convinced of their goodness.
We spread our search, and eventually figure out that the trackers (the
four magic boxes that optimally accept power from the solar array, and
optimally push that power out into our batteries), are seeing the array
just fine, and are seeing the batteries just fine, but are failing to
push any power from A to B. Between us, we’re sure that the trackers
worked back in Perth, and between us we’re sure that none of us have
rearranged any of their configuration switches. It’s lunch time, so
rather than getting the rest of the team to deliver lunch to us, we
elect to return to Alatai and talk about it.
Lunch is toasted cheese sandwiches, also featuring sliced tomato and
sliced meat of your choice. A few students burn their first efforts,
by turning the frying pan up too hot.
We make some phone calls. Several back to key people in Perth, to
check data sheets for us, to fish replacement parts out of Sungroper 1,
to generally hedge our bets. And one to Stuart at AERL, the
manufacturer, to ask about the problem. We describe the current state
of the switches on the trackers. They’ve each got an OFF switch, which
is in the ON position. Oh yes, says Stuart, if the OFF switch is in
the ON position, then they’re off, and they won’t pump any power.
Back to Hidden Valley. As we drive in at about 70km/h, parallel to
part of the race track, we get passed by a solar car. In the pit, we
flip the OFF switches to the OFF position, and power up again. The car
comes up smoothly, and the trackers pump power in just the way that
they are supposed to. Applause.
We still have no idea how the OFF switches got to the ON position. An
Aurora team member wanders by and suggests it was the switch fairies.
Apparently Aurora have had some experiences with switch fairies in the
past.
Steve and crew work on aligning the steering. Andrew and I work on
bringing the Extra Sensor board up. It resolutely refuses to
cooperate. Even though everything on it looks perfect, its little
brain gives no sign of life. Luckily, after our earlier experience
with the trackers, we’ve asked our friends in Perth to ship some key
Sungroper 1 boards to us, including the original Extra Sensor board.
They will arrive tomorrow. We’ll drop the known working board in and
either trouble-shoot some more, or just write off the new board, and
replace it after the race.
This leads Andrew and I to the realisation that there will be a fair
amount of work back in Perth getting the original Sungroper back to
near-original condition. And I figure it’ll be a little while after
the race before we have the enthusiasm for that.
We roll the car out, and do some testing. We haven’t driven yet on the
newly fixed brakes, nor have we seriously driven on the present motor.
I drive first, on the basis that I’m the most technically experienced
driver. I do a few low-speed bunny-hops in the pit lane, as a means of
testing the brakes. Then it’s out on the track for a lap, hotly
pursued by a follow car. There are one or two other cars on the track,
so we have a student up on on the viewing platform calling some
perspective to us, so as we don’t get in anyone’s way. I take the car
for a bit of a flog. The steering is a bit different from Sungroper 1,
as it’s 3 turns lock-to-lock, as opposed to Sungroper 1’s 0.9
turns, but otherwise it’s a very similar experience. Leeming Sungroper
presently has an identical motor and controller to Sungroper 1, is of
very similar geometry, and identical electronics, except for the bits
we haven’t finished yet.
I return to the pit and pronounce it good. Steve Morgan goes out for a
couple of laps, partly to check the car for mechanical soundness, and
partly because since he’s put so much time into this car, he’s damn
well going to have a bit of a play.
Then, with sufficient happiness as to the state of the car, we put
students in. We have three of our four drivers here, and they each get
some laps. We get some idea of the car’s present efficiency, too: at 9
Amps (a touch over the amount we can sustainably spend during the race)
it goes at about 37 km/h. This is not enough to finish the race
without trailering. So we need some efficiency improvements in the
days ahead.
Nevertheless, the day is a success: we’ve got some mechanical and
electrical stuff sorted, and we’ve got some driver practice in.
Another team has arrived at the hotel: Apollo Solar, a Japanese team.
We return to the Alatai. Dinner is curry (your choice of chicken or
beef), and rice, with a piquant smoky flavour caused by the fact that
the bottom couple of centimetres worth of the rice is burned black.
Radio chatter is quieter this evening.
More tomorrow.
Doug says:
Breakfast. Following yesterday’s shopping mission, bags of Stuff have
been distributed to each room. Each bag has identical Stuff, but
multiple possible breakfasts can be created from the Stuff so provided.
I have a cheesy.
8am is the appointed start of our coordinated day: everyone is to
congregate at or outside room 116, so that John Beattie et al can
outline the plan for the day. The plan for today is to take the only
vehicle we have with a towball (i.e. the bus) to the shipping company,
Shaw’s Darwin Transport, in Palmerston, and pick up the trailer which
contains Sungroper. Shaw’s also shipped our logistics trailer, but
since we only have one towball, it’ll have to wait a bit. Shaw’s in
Perth told us that our gear would already be ready when we reached
Darwin.
We get there. Oh, you should have phoned, says the guy. Your trailers
are still in the backs of trucks. And it’ll take us a while to unload
them. After we figure out what trucks they’re in, that is.
We go to the shopping centre to burn some time.
Hertz phone us up. Yesterday, they delivered us vehicles without
towballs. They’re calling to let us know that they’re putting another
Landcruiser in the shop, so that a towball can be fitted, so that
they’ll have a vehicle-with-towball to give us. Sweet.
Shaw’s phone us up. Our trailers haven’t been unloaded yet, but they
are calling to let us know they want full payment before they’ll give
us anything. Just in case, I don’t know, the entire WA government does
a runner to avoid paying them. And Shaw’s don’t take cheques. Or
credit cards.
John goes and empties his bank account to get the requisite cash. We
bum around a little more until Shaw’s let us know that the trailer is
available. We pay, and pick up. We drive to Hidden Valley race track,
which is in fact not terribly well hidden, mostly because it’s on
Hidden Valley Road, which is well signposted.
We find Peter D in short order, and he lets us into pit 16. There are
half a dozen or so teams on site, including Aurora, MIT, Formosun and
Michigan Solar. There’s not a lot we can do with the car yet: all our
tools are in the logistics trailer, which John is going back to Shaw’s
to get. So I spend some time chasing the remaining bug in the
Sungroper electronics (which is that when you plug a Lillington
go-switch-and-speed-knob box into the Lillington motor controller, it
works fine, but when you plug our go-switch-and-speed-knob in, it
doesn’t). Our is niftier, partly because it additionally has a go
button, a go light and is integrated with our brakes and telemetry, and
partly because it is shiny.
Most of the rest of the team wander around the pits, visiting other
teams. A few people stop by our pit, and chat. One of the Aurora
people is suggesting that maybe it’s time for a new class of solar race
car, which is a bit more street-ready: takes two people, etc.
Interesting.
We break for lunch. Meat-and-salad sandwiches prepared by some of the
students. They are quite proud that they did today’s shopping with a
target of $200, and wound up spending $200.30.
Back to the racetrack. Andrew has arrived in Darwin and is waiting for
us there. He shows me the board he’s built to plug into our Extra
Sensor board (which really we should call the Voltage Sense board, ‘cos
that’s what it does), to collect wires from all over the car in a tidy
way. Nifty.
Some students drive the race course in a Landcruiser, to familiarise
themselves with it. Aurora does some laps. As it rushes past us down
the straight, we hear the noise of its passage — it is the sound of
air tearing over its shell, with just a hint of motor sound underneath.
Steve Morgan works on the brakes. The brakes have had a mysterious
fading problem, and Steve figures it must be the master cylinder. So
he changes it for a new one.
I work on finding the speed controller bug. And I make a mistake.
Because, I mean, given that the speed knob box can be detached from the
motor controller, you’d expect it to be designed so that when you have
no speed knob at all attached, that the controller would interpret this
as a request for zero speed. Wouldn’t you? And you’d think that when
you don’t have a go switch connected, that the controller would be so
designed as to interpret this as a request for not-go. Yes?
But this is not the case. I power up the car to test some numbers,
trying to narrow down the bug. I do it without a
go-switch-and-speed-knob connected to the controller. I lean over the
side of the car and turn on the main breaker. I turn on the battery
strings. I turn on the 12V. I turn on the 24V. And then I turn on
the motor controller.
The car lurches, at full power, backwards, trying to leap out of its
wheel chock and twist out from under me. I have the presence of mind
to turn the motor controller off.
I’ve scared myself, twisted the wheel chock a bit, and left a 40 cm
long burn-out on the floor of our pit, but I’ve gotten lucky and
damaged nothing.
Some investigation later, I find the problem with our speed knob panel:
one of the wires in the cable leading to it simply doesn’t conduct. No
sign of damage at either end; it just doesn’t work. Moral: don’t use
telephone cable for mission-critical applications.
Our day is about done (and this email is too long). We return to the
Alatai Apartments. Dinner is spaghetti bolognaise prepared by students
in each room. There is some competition between students, visiting
each others’ rooms to check the relative quality of the fare. In all
cases, the quality is good.
John discovers that a nifty way to supervise the distributed students
is by giving each room a two-way radio. Much radio chatter ensues.
I drop in and visit my friends at Zone 3 Darwin, just a couple of
blocks from where we’re staying. I play a couple of games, and manage
to rank second in my second game.
Back to the apartments. More radio chatter. Check email. Sleep.
Tomorrow, we’ll take the car out onto the track.
Doug says:
6:45am meet at the airport. 7 degrees outside. 18 students, four
laptops, three teachers, two satellite phones and a UHF CB antenna.
Qantas handle us smoothly as a group booking. Fly to Darwin. Pick up
bags off the carousel: students form a bucket brigade, sorting the
teams bags (all marked with “group booking” tags) and ferrying them
into a heap. Acqire two 4 wheel drives from Hertz, kindly paid for by
a sponsor, McMahon. Step out of the terminal into a wall of Darwn
heat: 34 degrees and humid. 4WD’s are supposed to have rotating amber
lights on top, and tow-balls on the back; but have neither.
Take one 4WD to Thrifty, pick up 22-seater bus. Meet Michigan Solar’s team leader and their internet guy at Thrifty. Internet guy says he has a dish cooler than Onno’s: 0.9metre dish but it’s permanently mounted on the back of a ute, and auto-targets itself onto the satellite upon command. He says his company has built a second one and shipped it to New Orleans.
Students onto bus, then drive to Alatai apartments, in the north-east corner of the heart of Darwin, spitting distance from the Stuart Highway. A week from now we’ll be racing down that road.
Team meeting, then the entire group goes to the supermarket for shopping. Supermarket is open: no southern-half-of-Western-Australia stupid inconvenient restrictive shopping hours here. Not that I have issues or anything.
In the evening, down to the Mindil Beach Markets. Food. Torches, firestaffs, poi and juggling balls to muck around with, though I don’t play with any actual fire. Flaw in the Buddy System revealed: I am late back to the bus, and everyone has a buddy except me. Bus does notget far before this is realised. Embarrassment.
Return to Alatai. A couple of Nuna team members are in the pool. All
of our students join them.
Today: pick up car, take it to Hidden Valley, debug.
