This will be our final blog post. This week we finished up our Solar Safe commercial, our poster and we have our final presentation on Friday! Were very excited to be wrapping up this project, but like all things, its bitter sweet. We have enjoyed working with next era and our liaisons so much. We are going to be touring the next era headquarters and will be getting to see a demonstration in their lightning lab. Hopefully its not too shocking! Thank you IPPD and Next Era, good luck to any future Ippd’ers and happy graduation to all the seniors!

Figure 1: Next Era company visit to company headquarters, left to right; Philip T, Sarah, Sasha, Ayaan, Philip O

This week was a big one for our team. We are approaching the end to our project and we have been coming across a few issues lately, related to finalizing the inputs of our model. Through out the last 2 semesters it had become extremely apparent that our project was right in the middle of many research gaps. This led us down a very winding road and has put many obstacles in our path. The answer to the question Next era asked our team to solve was not straight foward, but this week after several meetings we were finally able to finalize all the inputs and the way they were going to be pulled from data. This also forced us to accept our limitations and this was a difficult task. None the less this was very exciting and we are just now putting the final touches on everything. We are excited to present our project next week to our liaisons and soo excited to see their headquarters. 

Figure 1: Solar safe FDR review presentation, left to right, Philip O, Philip T, Ayaan, Sasha, Sarah

This week solar safe is focusing on getting ready for the PID day next week. Aayan is working tirelessly on getting the model to be user friendly and the Philips are finishing the touches on their latest lightning calculations and code. Sarah is finishing up her soil testing that has led to some interesting discoveries and Sasha has been researching open-source resistivity data for the model. Tensions have been high leading up to the PID but we are doing our best to work out any kinks before inspection day!

Figure 1:Solar Safe Team meeting, featuring Shridar

This week was an exciting week for Solar Safe! We had our prototype inspection day on Tuesday where we presented our solar safe GIS model to our 6 wonderful judges. We got some valuable feedback as well as some very positive affirmations from judges. Our team is gearing up to finish putting together our model by next week. But in other news we had a meeting with next era lawyers right before inspection day and its looking good as of now for our solar safe patent, and were looking forward to continuing our work with next era. Finally we were able to test our 3D model on Thursday, and the results were shocking, so shocking we over heated the system and had to stop testing. The Philips plan to do a bit more testing next week. Stay tuned!

Figure 1: Solar safe 3D model with synthetic lightning, done by the Philips

The Philips made lots of progress this week with the physical 3D model as they met up to work on both their calculations and physical model. They received all the parts that were pending, and we are getting ready to test the model as a team next week on Thursday. We are hoping this will be an exciting, not Shocking feat. The Philips have a plan for some necessary safety features when testing this model and we will likely have a defibrillator on deck just in case anything goes wrong. Wish us grounded success!

Figure 1: Philip T (right) and Philip O (left) working on building the 3D solar safe model

This week we received some very exciting news from our wonderful next era liaisons! Next era is currently in the process of securing some kind of licensing/patent for our Solar Safe solution. Sasha and Aayan are working on figuring out the coordinate system of our GIS model and aligning that with in field measurements. We are still collecting some data for our validation plan from various sites and hope to have that very soon. Sarah is working very hard on finishing up the in lab testing and we believe this will be complete in the next week or so. Finally, the Philips are working on finalizing their plans for grounding and working closely with our coach Baoyun. 

Figure 1: Solar safe excitement, from left to right; Ayaan, Sarah, Philip O, Philip T

This week we had our QRB2 presentation, where we discussed the changes we’ve made to our model plan, transitioning from soil treatment plans to a GIS model with varied grounding considerations. We also got into detail on grounding calculations done by the Philips and their continued plan for additional grounding.The judges made some really good points about their concern with our projected timeline. They asked some hard and valid questions that only created a spark under our butts. In the end they agreed that we have a lot of work on our hand but they are just as confident we will finish in the projected time as we are. We are working hard on pushes all our plans forward and we will have some more updates soon!

Figure 1: QRB 2 presentation, from left to right Sarah, Sasha, Aayan, Philip O, Philip T

This week we are making strides with our model and working on converting the original concept from a numerical model to a GIS system. After our visit to georgia we gained an incredible amount of insight which is what ultimately paved the path to go all in on making a GIS model. This week Aayan was able to find out some valuable information for Sasha and Sarah in reference to SSURGO. This information related to data collection is extremely important while developing our model, because when using GIS systems for data they tend to vary greatly based on location, so this information will allow us to understand realistically what we will be able to develop. The Philips seem confident with their lightning solution and are working with our coach and lightning professors to perform safety distance calculations. They are in the beginning stages of designing our teams 3D model. We are all looking forward to moving forward with this stage of our project! 

Figure 1: Sasha and Sarah Collecting Soil data for the GIS model in Georgia

This week our team, Solar Safe took a trip to Georgia, and drove 5 hours to visit one of the next era solar sites. On our journey to and from Georgia our team saw some chocolate milk cows, almost followed the GPS into some uncharted territory, had some interesting opinions on Dorito lime dynamite chips, pondered what went on in Tampa on march 26th 2022, and learned a lot about one another some might say we learned a new language. Overall we had a great site visit where we gained so much insight for our grounding issues from the source. This experience shifted the expectations of our model and now we will be focusing on implementing GIS elements moving forward. We got the opportunity to take some in field electrical conductivity measurements and work with technicians and see some real life damage. This should be very helpful with the validation for our model and overall this visit gave us some very valuable time with our wonderful next Era liaisons.

Figure 1: Solar safe, Georgia collage

This week, Team Solar Safe finalized our plans for an upcoming trip to a solar site in Georgia, focusing on additional testing and site scoping for soil and grounding. With our rental car and hotel bookings sorted, we’re set to hit the road bright and early next Thursday morning at 7 a.m., aiming to arrive faster than lightning but prioritizing safety above all else. The journey is roughly a 5-hour drive, and we’re eager to gather valuable insights to inform our work.

Figure 1: Solar safe Travel graphic