Category: Solar

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Solar Slider Design & Assembly

Design and assembly of the Solar Slider
Design and assembly of the Solar Slider
Assembly of the Solar Slider

Led by SDRES board member and UCSD Engineering professor, Kurt Lund, PE, the Engineer’s for a Sustainable World design and build the cage to be mounted on a trailer, to raise and deploy a 2kW DC solar array.

Our advisor Kurt, a professional engineering consultant, graciously opened his garage, tools and skill up to us for building the cage. As a group of undergraduate engineers (and one Psychology Major), we knew we had many hours ahead of us and plenty of “learning incidents” (where we completely mucked a few things up and had to fix it), but that’s why we started this project in the first place.  -Joseph Ocampo, Wipomo Research Intern

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How Do You Run Out of Fuel in a PHEV?

Running Out of Fuel in a Plug-In Hybrid is hard

Because there are dual fuel sources in a Plug-In Hybrid vehicle, you wouldn’t expect it’s possible to run out of both, but it’s easier than you think.  Results can vary drastically based on your personal driving habits and how often you plug-in. 

Running Out of Fuel in a Plug-In Hybrid is hard
Running Out of Fuel in a Plug-In Hybrid is harder than you think.

For example, my Toyota Prius Plug-In gets anywhere from 500 – 1000 miles per gas tank.  If most of my driving is short local trips, it’s closer to 1,000 miles.  After the gas light starts blinking, it might be 3 or 4 weeks of daily commute driving before the car actually runs out of gas. 

Under those conditions recently, the “Add Fuel” message on start up and the blinking dashboard light no longer registered a conscious warning.  I started out on a road trip and ran out of gas in the worst of all places, between towns in the California desert near Arizona and Nevada.

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