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World Solar Challenge

Designing, building and racing a solar car is not just all about solar energy research. It is a true merging of diverse engineering disciplines, including photovoltaic, electrical, mechanical and computing. Further, the research arising from this project might lead to benefits for traditional petrol-driven cars.

The UNSW Sunswift team has many UNSW COMPUTING students working on problems such as telemetry control, systems, and efficiency. In SUNSWIFT III, Intelligent electrical systems allows the vehicle to convert energy generated by a solar array into electrical driving power at an efficiency of over 95%. It seats two people and sports an array consisting of about eleven square metres of solar cells. It can cruise at 100 km/hr on just over 2kW of energy, which is about the same amount used to power a vacuum cleaner!

The team used 80 UNSW COMPUTING lab machines out of hours for three months, running aerodynamic simulations in order to determine the sleek design that ensures minimum wind resistance.

Racing a solar powered car is all about taking the small amount of energy that the solar cells are able to generate, and using it to travel a race route as quickly as possible. Efficiency is paramount. The energy supply and demand problems created by clouds and hills are alleviated by a small battery pack. Managing the energy in that pack, by choosing the most efficient speed to travel, has been the focus of significant attention by computer engineers.

We have built a telemetry system that monitors the energy being generated and used by the car, along with GPS information. The GPS information can then be used to examine a detailed survey of the race route, including a topographical map. This data can be analysed in real-time, and the optimal speed chosen to reach the finish as quickly as possible.

Behaviours such as slowing down while hill climbing, and during cloud breaks, are also being developed. The chosen speed can be fed back to the motor controller, via the sophisticated network within the car, updating the cruise control set-point. This intelligent cruise control allows the car to travel at a higher average speed on the same energy, but a similar system could be built which might assist in reducing the fuel consumed by normal road vehicles.

World Record

In January 2007 the team shattered the world trans-Australian record by making the journey from Perth to Sydney in 5.5 days - 3 days faster than Dick Smith's previous record.

Sunswift Car