Solar Scoreboard

Date
2014
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Engineering
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
The main result of this project was the design of an electrical system that powers Swarthmore's baseball scoreboard using solar energy. This energy is harvested through 2 Kyocera KC130TM photovoltaic panels. These are connected in series to a MorningStar ProStar PS-30M PWM Solar Battery Charge Controller, which maximizes the power output of the solar panels, monitors the state of charge of the battery, and controls the output to the load. The battery used in the system is a 24V lead-acid battery with 200Ah capacity. In between the controller and the scoreboard, a power inverter is used to convert the DC power from the battery to 120V AC required by the scoreboard. In order to expose the solar panels to enough sunlight for this system, they must be installed behind the right field foul pole, rather than on the scoreboard itself. This is due to blockages from trees and a building behind the scoreboard. The estimated cost of this system was $1360.00. This design was created using a combination of TRNSYS and Excel. These tools can be used to design future systems similar to this scoreboard. The cost estimation gives an idea as to what the cost of similar systems would be. If the work needed to connect a scoreboard to the grid exceeds this value, then the system is economically worth installing. The cost of the system as well as connection to the grid will vary with each system, but this project can be used as a model for the design and analysis of future systems.
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