This week was all about overcoming major design problems and finalizing decisions. Our group had been told to set up our solar array in one location, while our fuel cell was on the opposite end of the building. One of our team members showed that the low voltage, high amperage DC current we were planning on using would suffer massive losses and require extremely large, extremely expensive wires, costing many thousands of dollars. Running the wires in this way, would not be feasible because of cost, dangers, and power losses. By bringing this to the attention of our faculty advisers, we will be able to place the fuel cell much closer to the solar panels, saving us thousands of dollars and limiting transmission losses.
We also did a preliminary model of our data center power system in MATLAB, showing that the data center power requirements we had planned for would be too high of a load when using only the renewable energy sources currently available. In light of this, we decided our best approach would be to start with the smallest allowable power consumption, and slowly increase it as testing continues.
With these two items settled we are now making concrete plans on how to assemble our testing rig, as well as the accompanying solar array, electrical system, cooling system, and controls. It also provides more information for the modelers in our group to work with.

Rob Miller, Fuel Cell Design