This enclosure will hold the MPPTs and the Solar Sense boards for MSXIV.
Child pages contain info about placement options, internal wiring, and enclosure design.
Feel free to put some info about each of the different parts of the system below as you familiarize yourself with it as a quick reference. For each part, add info about what it does and why it is required. Creating a diagram of the solar system may help in understanding all the inputs and outputs of the box.
MPPTs
Maximum Power Point Tracker
“Maximum Power Point Tracker: An electronic DC to DC converter that maximizes power extraction from photovoltaic (PV) solar systems.”
MPPTs compare the voltage output by the solar panels and the current voltage of the batteries to calculate how to convert the voltage output by the solar panels to the optimum voltage to have the optimum amperage to charge the batteries with.
MPPTs are required because without them, the voltage of the solar panels may be insufficient to charge batteries or a large portion of the power from the solar panels could be dissipated as heat.
For more information, check out
https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/mppt-solar-charge-controllers.html/
Solar Sense Board
The Solar Sense board monitors the current, voltage and temperature of each MPPT. It takes in SPI communications from each MPPT, regulates it, uses I2C ADCs to sense the voltage from each MPPT, regulates the I2C signal and then passes all of these communications to the controller board. It also runs accepts connections from thermistors running from each of the solar arrays.
The Solar Sense board is important because the car needs to keep track of voltage and temperature as well as communicate with the MPPTs to keep the car running optimally as well as prevent and respond to emergency conditions.
Solar Panels (Power and Temperature Connections)
Solar panels are essential for a solar car to function. Without them, there is no solar car. To monitor these solar panels, we attach PT100 thermistors directly to the solar cells, as solar panels don’t work well if they get hot. There are four in total. The solar power input connectors will be 5.84mm pitch molex connectors, using 14AWG orange cable. The temperature measurement will use the same connectors.