Solar Boat Twente: Launching into Innovation!

Solar Boat Twente Blog – 21/05/2024

This year, we built a new boat! Yes, you read that correctly. We, Solar Boat Twente, have constructed a brand new vessel. Our year began by fine-tuning the design from the previous team. Once the final designs and drawings were completed, we dove into production. From December to mid-February, we focused on producing the hull, and finally, our new boat was ready in our workspace. Then, we began integrating various components such as the struts (which connect the foils to the hull), the propulsion system, and the electronics.

All these efforts have just been tested during our first race in Akkrum. We finished 5th overall, which we consider a significant achievement, since the boat was only able to fly a week before the race!

Regarding the electronics, we had to reintegrate the entire electrical system from the previous boat. Fortunately, the system’s modular design made it relatively straightforward to implement in the new boat. Given that the boat was completed so close to our first race, we decided to assemble it outside the boat initially. This allowed us to test both the electrical system and the software, as well as start testing the new PCB we developed.

One of the new PCBs we designed this year is the Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT). This device is the link between the solar panels and the battery. The amount of solar power that can be extracted from a panel highly depends on the light intensity and temperature. The MPPT adjusts the voltages and currents of the panels to find this maximum power point. In the picture, you can see our well-produced PCBs. We opted to have Eurocircuits assemble them, saving us considerable effort and avoiding the reliability issues we often encountered when soldering them ourselves.