Solar powered Pesticide Sprayer

We have discussed many agricultural projects on this blog. This post is part of that series. Farming is one of the oldest and important businesses ever done by humans but in most parts of the world, it is done in the traditional way. Though farmers are adapting to changing times there are many more things that are needed to be done.

Spherical Solar Energy Cells

The biggest hurdle in the use of clean energy is their costing which is far more than traditional sources. We at Projectideasblog.com always try to bring you information about the latest technologies and innovation and this article is one of those posts where we will not discuss ideas but technology which in the future has the potential to change our lives. 

Scientist around the world is working day and night to make it cost-effective. Batteries and Material costs are the two main reasons for its high production cost. We can bring down its cost in two ways; first by reducing the price of storage that we discussed in our last post and second by improving the efficiency which we are discussing today.

Solar Powered Bag

In the last few years, phones are getting smart, Laptops are becoming Tablets and CD Players are becoming iPods. All these changes make us more dependent on electronic devices than ever. Though these devices keep us connected, when the battery runs out they become a liability. That makes battery charging one of the most important needs of today’s world.
In my post mobile charger using a bicycle, I discussed how we can charge our battery while riding on a bike. Today we will discuss Solar-powered Bag which is not only useful and handy but uses green technology too. The solar bag consists of skinny film solar cells and batteries. It contains a flexible monocrystalline solar panel, battery, charge controller, plugs, cords, and light bulbs. It provides users with power up to 120 watt-hours/day, capable of powering electronic equipment rated up to 300 W.

Solar Energy Projects

Solar energy is energy from the sun. It is widely available in abundance and has many different uses.

The energy provided by the sun in one hour is equivalent to the energy consumed on Earth in an entire year. For this reason, there is a huge opportunity to use solar energy compared with other sources.

In this list of solar energy project ideas, we discuss various topics that show how we can make the best use of this wonderful source.

Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the sun. Humans have harnessed it since ancient times—from drying clothes to generating electricity—using a range of ever-evolving technologies.

Although it has many uses, we often refer to this energy as solar power, which is the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP uses lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam.

Quick solar project ideas (with simple explanations)

1) Solar Powered Motor (Water Pump Demo)

This project uses a 12V DC water pump and a 12V, 7Ah battery charged by a 6.5-watt solar cell. The setup can pump water and is a good demonstration of solar charging plus DC motor operation.

2) Solar Water Heater

We can save a lot of electricity by using a solar water heater instead of traditional heaters. If we combine it with cogeneration, it can be even more effective.

What Wikipedia says about Solar Water Heater?

Related PDF: Parabolic Trough Water Heating System (PDF)

3) Sun Tracker Project

Sun tracker devices orient various payloads toward the sun.

4) Produce Fuel Using Sun Energy

Harness energy from the sun to produce synthetic gas using water and CO2.

5) Solar Powered Remote Control Plane

Solar RC plane project using panels, batteries, and motors. For experiments, you can purchase an electric aircraft and replace its charging source from traditional batteries to solar.

6) 3D Solar Cells

3D solar cells are a new form of cells that capture nearly all of the light that strikes them. When used instead of traditional cells, efficiency can improve considerably.

7) Solar Powered LED Lights

LEDs are reliable and can work in extreme conditions. When powered by the sun, they can be installed at distant places in minutes.

8) Stirling Engine Generator (Solar Powered)

Solar-powered Stirling engine generator

Solar Cooker Project

A solar cooker is a device that uses solar energy to heat and cook food. It works on the basic concept of concentrating energy at one point. It can take as little as 45 minutes to build a simple cooker.

Why is it important?

Energy plays a vital role in human development and welfare. Solar energy is one of the cheapest and most inexhaustible sources of energy. It can be used for cooking as well as many other activities.

Things you will need

• Shoe box
• Aluminum foil
• String
• Tape
• Straws
• Manila folder
• Marshmallows (white and chocolate, or other colors)

How to build a solar oven?

Pizza Box Solar Cooker (PDF)

Build Reflective Solar Cooker (PDF)

Design, Development, and Testing of a Paraboloidal Solar Cooker

(Resource link can be added here if you have one.)

More solar project ideas

Solar Powered Mobile Charger

(Short build guide can be added here.)

Solar Toy Car

A solar vehicle is an electric vehicle powered completely or significantly by direct solar energy. Usually, photovoltaic (PV) cells in solar panels convert the sun’s energy directly into electrical energy. The term “solar vehicle” usually implies that solar energy is used to power all or part of a vehicle’s propulsion. Solar power may also be used to provide power for communications, controls, or other auxiliary functions.

What is a solar car?

How can solar panels power a car?

How a Solar Car Works (Simple Explanation)

The solar car works on a simple concept. Solar panels on the top charge a battery through wires. This battery powers a small DC motor mounted on the chassis. The motor connects to the wheels through gears. In simple terms, it is like a basic remote-control car. The only difference is that the battery is charged using solar panels instead of traditional sources.

Video: How to Make a Solar Powered Toy Car (video link can be added here)

• Solar Powered Refrigerator
• Solar Chimney
• BEAM Circuit Solar Engines
• Solar Powered Bird Scarer
• Steam engine powered by sunlight
• Solar Turbine Generator
• Solar Powered Path Finding Vehicle
• Solar Powered Generator
• Solar Powered Bicycle
• Sun Powered Bag
• Solar Insect Robot
• Solar-powered automatic rain-operated wiper
• Solar Powered Air Conditioner
• Solar Powered Water Pumps
• Solar Powered Boats
• Solar-powered Water Purification System
• Carbon Solar Cells
• Nanowires (New Innovation in Solar Energy)

As a kid, I made a solar system in my school science fair competition. Although I did not win, I gained a good understanding of satellites, planets, and the sun.

Other resources

• Stanford Solar Car Projects
• Bob’s Solar Project Blog

Mechanical engineering Project Ideas

In the field of mechanical engineering, we have a vast range of topics to select from. At present, companies and governments are dealing with two issues. First, is about global warming and the other is about competition.

For both these issues, mechanical engineers can contribute a lot. For example, to improve the competitiveness of the organization, you can build automation tools or robots which can help the company to improve its efficiency and similarly for global warming, you can bring some news ideas to either save energy or generate it without doing harm to nature.

The biggest positive about these is that solutions to both these issues are going to come from mechanical. This is the reason, I always recommend students to select topics which are related to either robotics or renewable energy.

I myself tried to find all the latest topics from around the world and write about them to give you some more insight into what's happening around.

Robotics 

Robotics Projects Robotics would be a good choice in mechanical projects: Robots are very attractive in comparison to other projects and if everything goes well they will make you win.

Though I  have written a separate post about robotics here as a starting point I would like to share all important links in this section. Using given links you can enhance your knowledge before building your own machines.

• How to Build a Robot
• Its Basics(pdf)
• Computer Controlled RC Car
• Robotic Spider
• Solar Insect Robot:  It is powered by solar. It will help you in understanding the concepts of both Robotics and Solar Energy.
• Fire Fighting machine
• Cleaning Robots
• Line Follower Robot
• Autonomous Agile flying machines

Produce Fuel using Solar Energy

Scientists around the world are working towards the goal of developing technologies to harness energy from the sun to produce fuels for transport, industry and electricity generation. Fuels produced using solar energy would transform our future energy options by providing an alternative to fossil fuels. Solar energy, radiant light, and heat from the sun have been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar energy technologies include solar heating, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal electricity and solar architecture, which can make considerable contributions to solving some of the most urgent problems the world now faces. We all know about the ever-growing energy needs of our world.

 If we can use it to produce fuel, it would be a milestone for us and for our future generation. Many types of research around the world are working on this project.

Solar powered remote controlled aircraft

On December 17, 1903, when Wright brothers build the first aircraft, it became discovery, that changed the world completely. They build fixed-wing aircraft which are capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. In the last century though, everything improved from the design of aircraft, fuel efficiency and power of the engine but aircraft fuel which is most important has not changed and become the leading cause of global warming.

Why?
If you read airplane history, you would find that human need and desire of flying is more powerful than flying with renewable energy. So, focus in the last century was only on designing and improving the efficiency of the engine and not on changing its fuel.

So, why now?
In the last decade, awareness of the general public about climate change has increased significantly. This awareness and fuel price that is rising at rocket speed creates catastrophic effect, which pressurizes us to think about alternative fuel for aircraft and one of these alternates is Solar Energy, which we are going to discuss today.

Is it possible?

Yes it is, recently Swiss-made Solar-Powered Plane, Solar Impulse completed its 4000 miles journey between Europe and Africa successfully. You can read more about it at the news website msnbc.

Solar powered water purification system

Waterborne diseases have a significant contribution to the total number of diseases around the world. Most of the developing countries' governments around the world are still struggling to provide clean water to their people. This problem is much more severe in some parts of Africa.

Today we will discuss how we can use solar energy to purify water. This would be a great project not only for you as your engineering project but for people whose life will change by your effort.

3D Solar Cells

We all know that popular conventional energy resources  such as oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power are accompanied by problems of air and water pollution, resource depletion and the greenhouse effect, all of which are becoming increasingly unacceptable and difficult to afford. In the 21st century PV (Solar Energy) can potentially meet the rapidly growing demand for electricity with minimal environmental consequence.

Despite being one of the best alternative , solar energy is far behind from coal and nuclear energy in terms of market share. Moreover, it is costlier and less efficient   than its counterparts.To improve its efficiency and reducing cost, we should move towards advanced solar cells such as 3 dimensional.


 Three-dimensional solar cells that capture nearly all of the light that strikes them and could boost the efficiency of photovoltaic systems while reducing their size, weight and mechanical complexity. The new 3D solar cells, created at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, capture photons from sunlight using an array of miniature “tower” structures that resemble high-rise buildings in a city street grid.

This idea of 3D Cell is of William Yuan is a freshman from Beaverton, Oregon.Yuan has developed a 3D solar cell that has the potential to revolutionize solar power.At the heart of Yuan's project is a solar cell that can harness both visible and ultraviolet light.Yuan's solar cells are calculated to absorb about five hundred times more light then a conventional solar cell and nine times more than advanced 3D solar cells.

More Info

Solar Powered Air Conditioner

Air conditioners are both cause and solution of global warming, due to the rise in temperature in recent years, it becomes necessary for each one of us to have an air conditioner. It has become a very important part of our life in recent years. The only problem is that it consumes a great amount of electricity which results in more global warming.

One of the best solutions to the above problem is an air conditioner that does not use electricity generated by pollution generating fuel, instead, it uses something renewable and unconventional. One of the examples for that is Solar Powered Air conditioner which takes its power from solar. Solar air conditioning refers to any air conditioning (cooling) system that uses solar power.

This project is part of solar project ideas and can be used by students of Mechanical or Electronics engineering. Even students in Physics would find it interesting. If this project is implemented with Passive Solar Design, it would be more effective.

Helpful Links :

Solar Air Conditioning 

Related PDF :

SAC
Solar Driven Absorption Air Conditioning Systems for the Caribbean
Liquid Desiccated Solar Air-Conditioner

Related Presentation(ppt):

Solar Desiccant Air Conditioning 

How Solar Air Conditioning Works?




Related Video :


Related Projects :
Solar Project Ideas

Sun Tracker Project

Solar energy is the most powerful resource that can be used to generate power. So far the efficiency of generating power of solar energy is relatively low. Thus, how to increase the efficiency of generating the power of solar energy is very important.

According to Wiki, A solar tracker is a generic term used to describe devices that orient various payloads toward the sun. Payloads can be photovoltaic panels, reflectors, lenses or other optical devices. It is used to minimize the angle of incidence between the incoming light and a photovoltaic panel. This increases the amount of energy produced from a fixed amount of installed power generating capacity.

This project idea is for students of Mechanical and Electronics engineering. Moreover, students at MIT have won the prize for the same. Cleveland State University students have done a project on sun tracker in 2008.

Related PDF :

Microprocessor-based solar tracking system using stepper motor

Related Videos :
University of Berkley Solar Tracker Project



Download code of this project at Google Code

Related :
Solar Projects

Solar Powered Path Finding vehicle

To build this project you need to answer two important questions:

First, How to use solar to power the Robot?

It is fairly easy to implement, just buy one electronic toy car and Install PV cells at the top of it. Connect these cells to the rechargeable batteries.

Get Details about Solar Vehicle
How Solar Panels Power a car?
Presentations of Solar-Powered Endurance Vehicle Project

How to build your own solar vehicle?
Cheap easy Solar Powered Robot
Solar Powered 10 mg Silicon Robot(pdf)

And

Second, How to implement pathfinding in your vehicle?

Pathfinding is a technique to move a robot from point A to point B avoiding any obstacle in the path. We can many different techniques for that but the most popular one is to first make our robot familiar with the surrounding and then robots can use surrounding information in Pathfinding. This technique is very old and is not useful in challenges where the robot doesn’t know anything about the surroundings. So, to it more, I am giving you some links to robotics pathfinding methods.

What is Path Finding?
Vehicle path-planning in three dimensions using optics analogs
Autonomous Pathfinding(pdf)

Related Videos :

Solar Powered Stirling Engine Generator

What happened in Japan, can happen anywhere. This disaster is a clear warning of the dangers of nuclear energy. Many countries started to avoid nuclear fuel for future energy needs. Even though nuclear energy is a great source of green energy, but because of natural disasters such as Tsunami and earthquakes,it can be dangerous too. In this post, we are going to discuss electricity generation using solar.

It is highly recommended to go through the Stirling engine post before reading further. As we know the Stirling project is very easy to implement. While, in general, Stirling engine we use a candle as a heat source, here we would use solar energy.

Links which would be helpful :

Solar Heat Engines 
Stirling Engines: Scrap to Power 
 
Related PDF :
Solar Dish

Related Video :





Generate electricity using this engine :


Related :
Stirling engine Project
Solar Projects

Solar powered refrigerator

What is Solar Powered Refrigerators?
They are absorption refrigerators. An absorption refrigerator is a refrigerator that uses a heat source (e.g., solar, kerosene-fueled flame) to provide the energy needed to drive the cooling system. Absorption refrigerators are a popular alternative to regular compressor refrigerators where electricity is unreliable, costly, or unavailable, where noise from the compressor is problematic, or where surplus heat is available (e.g., from turbine exhausts or industrial processes).

Solar chimney

What is Hybrid Chimney or Solar Chimney?
The solar chimney is the natural way of keeping any building cool. It is a device build for natural ventilation. It consists of the black colored chimney, inlet, and outlet air aperture.