What’s the latest on the Moving Solar panel Prototype by Queen’s University of Belfast?

Back in January we shared the exciting announcement that Queen’s University Belfast, one of our Partner for Northern Ireland for our annual engineering competition, would be bringing Sam’s engineering idea to life in the form of a prototype.

You can recap on the full original update but if you recall Sam’s idea was Moving Solar Panels which automatically adjusts based on the position of the sun.

Midpoint update

Kevin Fitzsimons, a final-year BEng student at EEECS, selected Sam’s design to incorporate into his final-year dissertation project under the supervision of Dr Robert Best. Kevin was keen to investigate the feasibility of moving solar panels to solve the problem of placement on properties which do not have a south-facing side to mount panels on.

Now we are in the summer term, we have just received a Midpoint update from the ProtoTeam at Queen’s University Belfast!

Currently the simulation investigation has been conducted with data analysis underway to understand the effectiveness of the proposed system compared to existing fixed mounted domestic solar panel solutions for homeowners. The YouTube video above shows the simulation and proposed solution. This utilized simulation software kindly provided the National Renewable Energy Lab. Furthermore, the creation of these simulations took considerable time due to the specific niche programming language it uses. This work has been entirely conducted by an undergraduate student, which gave them a valuable learning opportunity but that also meant it was challenging for them having no previous experience of this software before. At the final judging, the important insights gained from the simulation investigation will be presented to show the full considerations and implications of the prototype.

What’s the next step?

The School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science will unveil this prototype at the next Northern Ireland Awards Ceremony and Public Exhibition on 25h June. Book your tickets here.