This week, we got to tackle one of our biggest IPPD milestones so far: the Preliminary Design Review! We spent the entire week carefully perfecting our PDR presentation and report.

On Tuesday during class, we spent the day presenting our PDR presentation to our peers, to gather feedback from the entire class as well as get an idea for the rough time required. This was a great way to catch up with other teams and not only learn their progress but share ours!

Thursday was dedicated to sharing our PDR presentation with our liaison engineers in preparation for our visit and executive presentation on 10/18. Over 20 people will be in attendance (including NextEra executives!), so we made sure to review everything for a great first impression.

Friday was our deadline for the PDR presentation and report. We scrambled to put the finishing touches on our assignments as Word and PowerPoint buckled under all four of us editing the dense documents, but nevertheless we submitted with time to spare. We also had the opportunity to review the presentation with our coach, who will be joining us next week via Teams!

Aside from our weekly recap, we have some exciting news. We have finally narrowed down our prototype search to two contenders- a “modular bricks” approach, and “rack-and-cards” approach. The first is modeled after a DIN-rail style module, and the latter is modeled after a rack-mounted telecom equipment box. Both of these options have their benefits and drawbacks, so at the request of NextEra, we will continue to develop each concept until we settle on a definitive answer. Enjoy some sketches courtesy of our very artistic team:

We’re going into next week with a lot of energy, enthusiasm and ideas. Hopefully we will have an even better idea of how to proceed after our meeting with NextEra!

See you next week!

It’s good to be back! After our delays with hurricane Ian, we all returned to campus on Monday to resume work with our team. Since many of us were working remote even through our evacuation, we dedicated Monday to compiling all our changes to the project and any recaps. After that, it was non-stop prep work- we kicked off Tuesday with a coach meeting to discuss our First Month Report, as well as our Requirements and Specifications to move forward with the Preliminary Design Report. Thursday was spent meeting with our Liaison engineers and assessing their feedback regarding our generated concepts. Additionally, this Friday was Homecoming week! We celebrated our new-found day off by dedicating the day to blocking out tasks in preparation for our Preliminary Design Report and PDR presentation.

Through all of the stress of the week, we have some new milestones:

• We have narrowed down our concept selection to two concepts. We will decide on the path forward before our PDR.
• Our development kit purchase has been approved and should be delivered by next week.
• Our PDR presentation date has been approved: October 18 @ NextEra Energy in Juno Beach!

At this point, we have to thank our liaison engineers at NextEra- not only have they been extremely helpful through the infancy of this project, they share the same enthusiasm that the team does. We are happy to work with them!

As you may well know, Hurricane Ian hit the west coast of Florida and came across the state. Classes were cancelled and team members went home in preparation for the coming storm. Some members evacuated their families in anticipation of a direct hit. This has thrown a wrench in our plans and put us a bit behind in our project and reports. 

But we will bounce back! We recently met and put together a detailed plan to get us back on track next week. We will finalize our design for the Preliminary Design Review report and will meet with our coach and liaisons to get feedback. We look forward to the opportunity to showcase our project during Peer Reviews and to receive feedback during that time. 

We are currently in contact with the liaison engineers at NextEra Energy to plan a presentation of the PDR on site in Juno Beach, Florida. We have a set plan in place to have our presentation finalized by then. We will continue to work hard in the coming weeks to get our design finalized! 

Until next time!

Phew, what a week! Since last time, our team worked diligently on potential ideas for the heart of the ROCC-in-a-box project. So many ideas were thrown around when it came to the most basic of details. Every team member contributed a slice of from their own interdisciplinary backgrounds to create a slew of possibilities to explore. Armed with new research, we met with both the coach and liaison engineers to present an entire page of questions! Working with the enthusiastic engineers from NextEra Energy, we left with an entirely new knowledgebase to work with.

Due to the ongoing chip shortage from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been forced to make some component selection decisions earlier than we would like. We have begun the ordering process for microcontroller evaluation boards so that we can evaluate a number of chips, with future availability a key consideration.

As the team approaches the First Month Report deadline, we have committed to working overtime on our literature review and concept generations to create a glance at where our heads are.

We are happy to report the team has been hard at work! We started the week off with a jam-packed session of coach, liaison, and team meetings, and followed up with another team meeting towards the end of the week. We had a great time getting to meet all the people involved in the project, and it didn’t take long for everyone to be on the same page. We can already tell that this will be a great experience for everyone.

We wrapped our meetings up with questions and expectations for the project, and we will take the chance next week to research further and follow up with more clarifications. We also have a safety workshop planned early next week, so we can get right into brainstorming and prototyping.

Finally, we had a chance to take headshots for our spot in the IPPD Bio Book. Keep your eyes out for some great looking photos of the team!

Hello world! We are happy to announce our team formation for the 2022-2023 UF IPPD program, sponsored by NextEra Energy. We hope to be part of the future of renewable energy.

The team consists of four amazing engineers:

• Quinton Wiebe
• Kayla Woods
• Tom Rice-Bladykas
• Jack Carmody

Our first meeting was held to get everyone up to speed and finalize our meeting schedules. We look forward to meeting our liaison engineers from NextEra next week, as well as discussing the project requirements.

See you next week!