Meeting with solar car team from Group T

Ended with a third place in the World Solar Challenge (for solar cars), visiting our colleagues from Group T sure should be an interesting opportunity to discuss ideas on solar panels, aerodynamic design and everything in between. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to have a glimpse at the solar car, 2 of my colleagues joined us for the too-early-in-the-morning train to Leuven. As we arrived in the station, Lynns message arrived in my mailbox explaining her fellow team members had some jet-lag related too-early-in-the-morning issues and they could not make it in time. Luckily café Entrepot serves cappuccinos with decent steamed milk and we were four persons which means we had to play cards, time suddenly flew by too fast. Lynn called, she arrived at our meeting point.

The solar car definitely is a nice piece of machinery. We could look at everything, ask anything but sure were not allowed to touch anything as one of my colleagues quickly found out while inspecting the silica coating on the solar cells. Lynn told us all about solar cells (theirs have an efficiency of ~36%), highly efficient MPPT converters made by MG Electronics and silica coatings from a guy living in the States with a patented technology (he makes the coating in his garage). She also told us their budget was about a 150 times ours, which quickly sunk in when she started estimating the cost of the different components. Before leaving she gave us contact details which she guessed might be useful for our project, I was a little ashamed we didn’t bring anything to give in return. It sure was an interesting start of our day, thanks again Lynn!