Week 3 - Spartan Superway Internship

During this third week I began creating designs for our solar panel mounting system. We plan to mount our whole assembly onto L-beams located at the top of the tracks. In order to do this, we planned to create friction mounts to the beams, followed by a custom rack for the panels.

The first step before mounting the panels is to create our foundation. Because we are attaching to L beams and do not want to drill into them, we needed to create friction mounts. To do this, I created an upper and lower mount that will squeeze onto the L beam. This allows for a secure connection as well as being able to slide back and forth along the rail for easy adjustment.

Figure 1: Friction mounts for L beams

The next step was to plan out how we wanted our solar panels to be. We created a curved array for aesthetic reasons, and measuring the width across the tracks we found that we could mount 4 panels side-by-side in portrait orientation. We have not decided on the exact solar panels, so we used the dimensions of 1m x 1.6m for our drawing. The panels begin at a descent of 10 degrees on the first panel, followed by 20 degrees by the second panel.

Figure 2: Solar Panel Array

Before we can attach this array to the tracks, we must first create a rack for the panels. I created a basic design that follows the inside edge of the solar panels, then attaches to the friction mounts by screw. Instead of screw holes, I created slots to allow for adjustments in the horizontal axis. In combination with the sliding friction mounts, this provides two degrees of freedom for the panels to be adjusted accordingly with each other.

Figure 3: Solar Panel Rack Mount

 Figure 4: Rack and Friction Mount Assembly

Lastly, I assembled all the separate pieces together and the result can be found below. In our first design, we had only used a 1x4 solar panel array. For next week I plan to look into creating larger arrays as to use reduce the number of mounts needed, as well as factor in the other components such as the micro-inverters.

Figure 5: Complete Assembly