Event Sparks Student Interest in Solar Energy

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Solar Energy Division created Solar Splash in 1994 to interest college students in solar energy, as an energy source and in its engineering applications. The competition is designed to provide hands-on engineering experiences involving teamwork, develop project and program management skills, expose students to technical disciplines, and require the use of system and people integration—while remaining fun.

Dr. Jeffrey Morehouse, Ph.D., P.E., is the treasurer and coordinator for Solar Splash 2019. He is a professor emeritus, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of South Carolina.

Digital Engineering: Can you provide an overview of the competition?

Morehouse: The objective of the UPS Battery Center-sponsored Solar Splash is to promote the construction and competition of a solar-powered boat [that] can be built within a school year at a reasonable cost. The five-day event competition format includes points awarded for both engineering design components (design report, poster presentation, workmanship) and for boat performance (maneuverability, slalom, sprint, and endurance events). The Solar Splash is also a chapter of the American Power Boat Association (APBA).

DE: Who will be participating or who has participated? How many participants have you had or do you expect? Any demographics of participants?

Morehouse: The competition is open to all universities, foreign and national. In past years, certain high schools’ teams have been invited when they developed successful solar-electric boats. Generally, between 14 [and] 16 teams complete their boats and come to the competition. The average team has about seven members, so over 100 students attend a Solar Splash. 

Over the past 25 years, well over 2,000 students from over 70 different universities have participated, many for multiple years and several from foreign countries (Canada, Puerto Rico, Japan, England, Turkey, Mexico, and this year, India). The students are mainly engineers: half mechanical, one-third electrical, and the rest marine, computer, and a few business-related; about 20% are female.

DE: Can you tell us about some of the designs that are part of the event and how they came to be?

Morehouse: The competition events require the solar boats to be able to go fairly long distances, to go fast and to be very stable and maneuverable. The Solar Splash on-site competition takes place over a period of five days, usually held at the end of June over the summer solstice. The first two days begin with technical inspections verifying that the craft and skippers meet all of the design and safety rules. This time is also used for a scored qualifying event, which demonstrates the maneuverability and stability of the craft on the water.

Once the entries and their skippers have passed all of the three required tests, the remaining three days are devoted to types of on-water performance events:

• slalom event, which tests the boat’s maneuverability and handling at speed around buoys over a closed course;
• sprint event, which shows, using stored solar energy (battery energy), that a boat can have “sprinting” speed for a limited distance (nominally 300 meters); and an
• endurance event, which is worth the most points and is patterned after similar events [that] have been held in Japan since 1989. The goal of the endurance event is to go the farthest in four hours (divided into two, 2 hour sessions).

DE: Can you provide some examples of what the event has produced or what you expect it to produce?

Morehouse: The top boats’ performances in the Sprint Event yield speeds of around 30 mph and 300-meter times of 25 seconds. The four-hour Endurance Event for the top boats is a 10-12 mph average, about 40-plus miles of travel. These times and distances continue to improve, but not as quickly as they did the first 15 years of the competition. The [photo] shows the variety of the hulls and photovoltaic designs picked by teams for the endurance event.

DE: Does Solar Splash have a particular stance on adopting an innovation that is linked to the program?

Morehouse: Solar Splash encourages innovation in any aspect of the schools’ designs. Each year the schools are urged to present a short write-up on their best innovations in order to win the Innovative Design Award. The five best technical design reports are open for use by all teams in the following year; thus, innovations can be brought into all future teams’ designs.

DE: What drives firms to sponsor the event?

Morehouse: Primarily, the university-level engineering educational aspects of the Solar Splash, and the engineering students that are involved in this design project. Over its 26 years, the Solar Splash has been sponsored half of those years by a mechanical engineering (ASME Solar Energy Division) or electrical engineering (IEEE-Power Electronics Society) professional organization. The other years’ [events] have been sponsored by corporations, primarily by Johnson Controls in the past, and currently by UPS Battery Center. Local sponsors in the vicinity of the competition are also a significant source of sponsorship.

DE: Why do you think participants enjoy Solar Splash?  

Morehouse: The success of the Solar Slash as a viable student competition has been demonstrated through its steady growth in participation and its success in gaining sponsorship over its 25-year life. However, success or failure in reaching its four educational goals is harder to determine. 

The students enjoy the competition and the chance to mix with students from other colleges and cultures. There is no doubt that the Solar Splash competition requires an exceptional amount of hands-on engineering to get a craft operational and to keep it operating. Nor is there doubt that teamwork is required to handle the multi-discipline design and construction, as well as the actual competing of the craft at Solar Splash. With all of the above in mind, it appears that the Solar Splash is meeting the general goals of “hands-on engineering, fun and teamwork.”

In determining whether the Solar Splash has been or is successful in meeting the four specific goals focused on fostering education in the project management, multi-disciplinary, energy use, and systems integration areas, it would be necessary to examine what takes place, educationally, with each of the team members for a given college. 

One college has reported from their design course process that the Solar Splash rules and competition requirements do tend to promote education in the specific goal areas. This finding is bolstered by many anecdotal stories from various team faculty advisors concerning how their teams learn and acquire the skills in the “four goals” areas. Many of the faculty advisors relate that their teams really learned what was necessary after the team had failed to perform as they had wanted to at the competition—hindsight does teach lessons!