Solar Freaks

TonyB wrote:I think we need to spilt this thread into separate NSW, TAS and WA threads. Who agrees??

That might be an idea although I don't really mind having all state events in the one thread.

From what I've heard the weather was pretty ordinary at the Vic event today and they didn't start their round robin seeding races until quite late in the day. I hope that the weather picks up for them tomorrow.

Hi all,
No photos but I have put the final 3 races between Winthrop's Powerhouse and Aquinas' Mike Couanis vids on Youtube. Have some more races from the day and could put them on at a later date.
My newly created Youtube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/bigwesterngrey

Details of competition winners and their cars or boats are:

2011 Model Solar Car (Secondary Schools)

1st Place Winthrop Baptist College - Powerhouse
2nd Place Aquinas College - Mike Couanis
3rd Place Belridge Senior High School - Roadhouse
4th Place Girrawheen Senior High School - Spectrum
Most Creative Car awarded to Toasted from Winthrop Baptist College
Best Poster awarded to Aquinas College

WILD CARDS
1. Guildford Grammar School with - Black Betty
2. Karratha Senior High School - Psyclops

2011 Model Solar Boats (Primary Schools)

1st Place Gooseberry Hill Primary School - Witchcraft
2nd Place Parkwood Primary School - Parkwood Rebels
3rd Place Rawlinson Primary School - Turtle
4th Place Parkwood Primary School - Eliminator
Most Creative Boat Photon - Rockingham Beach Primary School
Best Poster Rawlinson Primary School

WILD CARDS
1. Guildford Grammar School - Irma
2. Rockingham Beach - Photon

Above info from:
http://www.seaaus.com.au/content/view/446/145/
For those who dont know I am the teacher from Winthrop.
Bye

Thanks John and well done to Winthrop. Looks like you guys were reasonably comfortable winners in the end.
If you are able to get the rest of the vids up on YouTube in the near future then that would be great.

There are some event photos at the following facebook link that's listed on SEA's media release page.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Energising-Kids-Solar-Car-and-Boat-Challenge/147745761989795

Not really many car or boat photos (yet anyway), but just a few pics of the event in general. Looks like WA had a great setup over there this year.

Marc

So how did things go at the Vic event today? Anyone that was there at Science Works want to give us the rundown?

purely an assumption, but judging by the seedings and Knockout format ( where fastest 2 cars are assumed to be top and bottom) for victoria's competition :

http://modelsolar.org.au/EventInfo/Knoc ... rs2011.pdf

http://modelsolar.org.au/EventInfo/CarNames.pdf

Cars 52 and 44..

firefly wrote:purely an assumption, but judging by the seedings and Knockout format ( where fastest 2 cars are assumed to be top and bottom) for victoria's competition :

http://modelsolar.org.au/EventInfo/Knoc ... rs2011.pdf

http://modelsolar.org.au/EventInfo/CarNames.pdf

Cars 52 and 44..

Reasonable assumption I guess but I wouldn't go off seeding too much. Conditions were a lot better in Melbourne today and so things could have been very different. There might also not have been much between a whole bunch of the top cars as was the case in WA.

All I've heard is that they had a hazy day with up to 85% sun from 11.30 AM to about 1.30 PM with then some clouds coming over for the finals where the sun varied between about 20% and 80%. About 8 cars elected to run without electronics which is good to see and one of these actually placed first. Not sure who it was though.

All will be revealed over the next few days and apparently scrutineering photos are going to be loaded up onto the Vic website tomorrow.

Marc

Ok, this is just plain weird now! I am currently in the process of cleaning up the W.A. data. The results will be posted up shortly and what I have noticed in the results is, Girrawheen! They just stand out!

Going by times Girrawheen had the second fastest time over two laps but due to their draw the best outcome should have been third. I can not understand why their cars fluctuated so much. Some of their races they got mid 29s to 30s but then other races they got 33-34 seconds. All I know was their cars were pretty bashed around and this might explain it.

Girrawheen wasn't the only cars to show up with issue with timing. Attached is the entire competitions timing. Please note the format is our recording format over here and is user friendly for recorders by not easy to read. Also note this is not an official copy. All rights belong to Sustainable Energy Association of Australia and their copy will be released shortly.

Regards

jhg

Wow. Timing looks to be all over the show. Some of the race times appear ok yet then others are average - even for some of the top cars. I wonder how accurate the timing really was?

It's interesting to note that none of the cars, including the Belridge one, were able to get near the seeding time that they posted during the time trials (16.32s @ 89% sun). The fastest one lap time I could see was a 16.5s lap in 96% by one of the Winthrop cars.

Based on this fact I would guess there to have been some error with the Belridge time and so think that the eastern states can be a little more optimistic about their chances of winning in November.

I think that the nationals are going to be a pretty evenly contested event from a number of states and it looks like a few cars will be quicker than anything we saw last year - even though the cross-sectional area is the same and cars are carrying more weight.

Marc

Yes that is true Marc. There was one race between Winthrop and Girrawheen where Girrawheen won. Girrawheen 19 ish while Winthrop 21seconds. Although this Winthrop car was getting mid 17-18 all day. Yes there would have been timing errors but that would have only accounted for +-0.2 start and finish. Note there was two timers so margin for error would have been less. Noting that the car that won did definitely have the faster time. What can we say? W.A. has some dodgy winning cars! But these duds will beat all the other states when we get it all sorted out!

Vic seeding times and photos of the top 4 cars are now up on the Vic website at:

http://www.modelsolar.org.au/AboutUs/Results

Well done to everyone that competed and congratulations to all the placegetters and award winners.

It's interesting to note that Velox (the car that was seeded 1st) seems to have pretty much pwned everyone in the lower sunlights on the first day but was then knocked out in the actual competition due to being too unstable and coming off the track when the sun came out (from what I've heard anyway). I wonder if it will be given a wildcard and can fix up its stability issues for the nationals?

This is an unofficial picture. This car was placed 4. The boys at Girrawheen are changing this car for nationals. Wonder what it will look like? What I have heard from the boys: they believe their car's traction was an issue and they will be changing an o-ring for it. Also the ballast was moving inside the car which will be fixed up also on their new car.

Hey Jun,

Just a quick question. Are the panels that Girrawheen used the new Scorpio Technology car panels? I was wondering how much watts you guys obtained before the panels were taped down, if you remember of course. I was curious because on the Scorpio catalogue, it says they are 4.8w each. If you had 3 of them it will be 14.4w, but obviously they will not be exactly that, but probably a bit lower. How much lower though? Would the power have been below 10w with 3 panels? Was the 4th panel practically taped down? I'm pretty sure the Strathfield High students here in NSW had the same setup.

Thanks and congratulations to all the participants, should be a great national event as always!

Karo wrote:Just a quick question. Are the panels that Girrawheen used the new Scorpio Technology car panels? I was wondering how much watts you guys obtained before the panels were taped down, if you remember of course. I was curious because on the Scorpio catalogue, it says they are 4.8w each. If you had 3 of them it will be 14.4w, but obviously they will not be exactly that, but probably a bit lower. How much lower though? Would the power have been below 10w with 3 panels? Was the 4th panel practically taped down? I'm pretty sure the Strathfield High students here in NSW had the same setup.

Hi Karo,

I wouldn't take too much notice of the Scorpio catalogue as some of the voltages and currents are from old stock.
They haven't got in any new shipment of the car panels they have listed and so most cars have been using 2 of the boat panels in series (these are basically the new car panels). These boat panels are put into two classes based on their power output, with one lot being the "high performance" boat panels (anything over 5.8W) and the others being the regular boat panels.

These panels all have 14 cells (2 more cells than on previous boat panels) and can be arranged in series to give you a Vmp of around 7V and so 2 panels get you up to 14V which is good enough for the cars (2 of the old boat panels would have only given you 12V which is a bit on the low side when running with electronics).
Anyway, the high performance panels then put out an Imp of about 850mA and the others something a little less than that.
So 2 of these panels will give you well over 10W and so are then masked off at scrutineering so the cells produce around 700mA Imp (ie 700mA x 14V = 9.8V).

Anyway, because these new boat panels have a slightly higher voltage and 2 are good enough for the cars, it makes things a lot easier for Scorpio as they only have to supply the one kind of panel.

The panel that the above Girrawheen car is using is made up of 2 of these boat panels and Strathfield High had the same setup. A number of others in WA also used these panels as did many in Victoria.

Marc

Hi Karo,

If the panels are in Series, when you mask just one panel, it has the same effect as masking both panels.
So basically the tape on the second panel is made redundant.

If the panels are in parallel, you will need to mask both panels.

SSHS had their panels in series. Therefore only required one panel to be masked. Adding tape to the secondary panel would of made no difference to the power output.

regards
Tony

Yes the panel above has the opinion of series and parallel opinion, hence tapping off on both panels, although they ran series with maximizer all day. The car looks nice but performance wise - dodgy. It's performance was all over the place. No offense to my old school. Also thanks for answering the question guys!

Correction Marc. Only 2 out of 3 girrawheen cars used the new Scorpio panels. Aquinas and Guildford used the older Scorpio car panels from 2009/2010. Roughly 50% of the cars used the engelec modules! Maybe more.

jhg wrote:Correction Marc. Only 2 out of 3 girrawheen cars used the new Scorpio panels. Aquinas and Guildford used the older Scorpio car panels from 2009/2010. Roughly 50% of the cars used the engelec modules! Maybe more.

So only 2 Girrawheen cars used these new panels out of all of the WA ones then? I guess that makes sense if most of the schools still had perfectly good panels left over from previous years. I do know that at least 15 - 20 Vic cars were using them though.

I'm sure that the results will get published soon so everyone will be able to have a look, but I thought that I'd just say that the average chassis weight of this year's Vic cars was around 650g which is pretty darn heavy. I think that most of the placegetters were around the 400g mark though.

Here's another couple of Tas car pics. These are of the 6th place Queechy HS car as well as the school's other one that didn't end up featuring in the finals.



Marc

Thanks Marc for the upload. More designs to think about.
What surprises me, is why schools don't change their car colour? Belridge Yellow, Aquinas Red etc. Same with some tassie cars. Or has the schools found that their colour makes their car go faster?
I understand that they might have the resources there but doesn't a new generation of high school students come along every few years? No new ideas? There's something fishy around here! Respects to all teams!