From Car to Data Table


Computer Systems

One of the most important factors in solar car racing is creating a robust strategy to inform how we drive. Maximizing our strategic edge before we hit the track increases our efficiency, and gives us the best opportunity to bring home the win. In order to acquire data from our car and display it in […]

December 24, 2020

November Team Update


Electrical System, Featured, General, Outreach

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 […]

November 21, 2020

Wiring up the car


Electrical System, Featured

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 […]

April 23, 2019

Lighting up our system


Electrical System

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 […]

December 19, 2018

Designing our onboard telemetry computers


Computer Systems

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+ […]

December 18, 2018

Our Shockingly Good BMS


Electrical System

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 […]

December 14, 2018

Generating Power: The Solar Cells


Electrical System, Featured

We have been assembling photovoltaic cells into arrays and laminating them with a variety of techniques in order to understand the impact on cell efficiency. We are experimenting with 156 mm x 156 mm Sunpower cells and are covering them with heat activated lamination plastic. Recently, we found that the best way to ensure good […]

December 5, 2018