There are a lot of moving parts at a race and a lot of planning that goes into traveling to Texas, but perhaps the most important variable is our race plan and the strategy that goes along with it. Logistics and travel plans are important to make sure the team arrives on time and are […]
We’re happy with the progress we’ve made but still have a way to go before we’re ready for the race.
There are a tremendous amount of parts that need to go together to create a working solar car. While building a chassis and putting on bodywork are important, a huge aspect of the work is what goes on inside the car. All of the electrical systems need to be designed to be efficient and manage […]
Even though the Solar Car Challenge has been delayed until next summer, we haven’t stopped working towards our goal of creating a successful, competition-ready solar car to bring to the Texas Motor Speedway in July of 2021. Over the summer, the RAHS Green Energy Team reached a significant milestone: our new solar car is now […]
First and foremost, the Solar Car Reveal Event on June 7th will officially begin at 4 pm. But at 3 PM, the car will be available to look at and the team will be ready to show it to you! The address of Raisbeck Aviation High School is 9229 E Marginal Way S, Tukwila WA […]
Last week, our team mounted and wired the six solar panels on top of the car’s solar panel rack! This major milestone is what makes our car solar! Each panel is laye on top of an aluminum panel rack that provides structural support to each panel. The rack is attached to the car with two […]
A lot of wires are necessary to make an electric car operate – we need to connect the battery, motor controller, motor, solar panels, MPPTs (Maximum Power Point Trackers, which are used to optimize power output of the solar panels), shutoff switches, relays, and more! To safely wire everything up, we first created a detailed […]
As with any street legal car, there needs to be light indicators so that drivers are able to see what that car’s driver is doing. So for our car, while headlights are not necessary, stop and turn lights are required by the rules, so that our unfortunate driver doesn’t end up getting rammed for not […]
For our solar car, there are many requirements that we need to meet, and the many more needs to reach optimal performance with our vehicle. We need to design a rear-view camera system, telemetry displays, and a system control panel. In order to accomplish this, we will be using an array of Raspberry Pi B+ […]
An integral part of dealing with lithium ion batteries is having a battery management system (BMS). The purpose of this is to balance the cells (or sets of cells) in series to ensure while charging/de-charging the load is consistent across the whole battery. We are using a BMS which includes an android app to monitor […]
