High-Level Project Summary
At any given moment, the sun emits 3.86 x 1026 watts of energy. Most of this energy goes off to space. But about about 1.74 x 1017 watts of energy strike the Earth. That is 174000000000000000, the energy to power up the whole Earth 10,000 times.This to be split into 3 questions. What are the issues we humans are dealing with? Even though the sun can provide the energy to power up the whole Earth about 10,000 times, we humans do not utilize it and still rely on fossil fuels for electricity. Sources say that the oil we use can run out within 52 years and the coal we use to produce electricity will run out within 110 years and maybe earlier than that due to the high demand of fossil fuels.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our goal is to completely rely and utilize the Sun’s energy, falling into the Earth emitted by the sun.
Solar panels will be equipped with a censor which detects and recognizes the light source rotating according to the direction of the sun from 0 to 180 degrees receiving all the energy from the sun throughout the whole day.
At the end of the day, when the sun sets, and the censor detects no rays, the solar panel will return to its original position at 0 degrees facing east where the sun rises, repeating the process again the same is applicable in the case of windmills.
The same can be done with windmills. The wind mills turn according to the wind’s direction by tracking it with help of online wind direction data and can provide statistics at the end of the day.
Our prototype app contributes by calculating the approximate energy received, amount of fossil fuel saved, amount of money saved each day comparing it to the electricity rate of that given region.
The app also provides a weekly, monthly and yearly statistics of the amount of money saved and energy produced.
This data will be calculated by the app depending on the number of solar panels built and the built in solar panel watts. The app will produce a final report at the end of the day.
The app will produce a final report at the end of the day after calculating with the following expression
Solar panel watts x hours of sunlight x (75/100) x No. of solar panels = daily watt-hours.
The app can help us understand the amount of money and fossil fuels saved through out a day, week, month or year and keep us motivated to save more.
Space Agency Data
Live Data of heat and sunlight to be used in app calculation:
Live data of wind speed and direction:
Use: The data provided a foundation for our project giving us the means to understand the situation and create a solution.
Hackathon Journey
It was an amazing journey. We learned how to make an app and how many great alternatives are there to the standard present renewable resources.
We felt that the traditional solar panels were not efficient enough as they only faced in one direction wasting the natural resources and so we had so we though what if the solar panel moved with the sun.
We then ran into the problem that an average user has no idea of the output and savings done due to the solar panels so we then created an app to sole this problem.
References
- Data based on an REC 290 Wp solar module and calculated using PVsyst simulation software.
- NASA Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources
Tags
#hardware #software #app #renewable #solar