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PHL Solar Car Team gears up for Australia race


This year, the Philippine Solar Car Team is highly optimistic about racing in the 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge. For one thing they’ve trained doubly hard for the challenges of the Australian Outback, where the race will be held on a cross-continent trip from Darwin to Adelaide from October 16 to 23 —a journey of almost 3,000km! For another, they’re making the trip down under earlier, so that all preparations and tests can be worked out just in case there are kinks that the dry, Australian climate might present.

SIKAT2 Team members: (Left to right) Jong Jimenez of Sun Power Phils; Jack Catalan, Team Leader; Charleson Meridones, Engineer. Benjie Castro
“I am mostly preparing for being inside a car for four to eight hours in the hot sun," said Danver Panganiban, one of the four drivers for Sikat II, this year’s Philippine entry in the race. Panganiban was also one of the drivers for the Philippine team in the 2007 race and now he’s all revved up to be back in his old hot seat. Better specs this time around This time, the car frame is almost half as light as 2009’s first Sikat model. It’s also more aerodynamic and will consume less energy. This last is due mostly to the upgrade in batteries. “We now use Panasonic lithium ion phosphate batteries," explains Charleson Meridones, one of Sikat II’s young engineers. Crewed mostly by Engineering students from De La Salle University, the Sikat II team is led by DLSU Dean Dr. Pag-Asa Gaspillo and electrical team head Jack Catalan. Catalan explained that the Panasonic batteries are the same ones used to power laptops. “Dumaan kami sa butas ng karayom (We went through the eye of a needle) just to get [the batts]" he said “They’re actually for commercial purposes and Panasonic is very selective in allowing which teams to let use the batts. They didn’t want to sell it to us. But now that we have it, it’s a definite advantage." Overall, Sikat II has a top speed of 110kph with its two-kilowatt motor, ostensibly clocking in faster than its predecessors at the test run held at NLEX earlier this year. Running on its solar array, the car has a top speed of 85kph and can travel for more than 800kms. Sizing up the competition Still, the team will need all the help they can get to gain an edge against Japan’s Tokai University Team (which won in the 2009 race) and the Dutch Team (which won four times before Tokai took away their crown), who are at the head of the pack. In 2007, the Philippine solar car entry dubbed Sinag finished 12th among 40 participating nations. For a country who entered the race for the first time, that isn’t a bad spot to be in, but the current team is of the opinion that they can do so much better this year. “There are a lot of challenges to work out still, but we should do better than we did last time because our car is a lot better designed," said Ramon Agustines, President of the Philippine Solar Car Challenge Society, the pioneering organization responsible for putting the country on the solar race map. The World Solar Challenge While still a race at its core, the World Solar Challenge is mostly about energy management and vehicular stamina. A solar car race is much different than a normal car race in that while a 1000W car would complete the journey from Darwin to Adelaide in 50 hours, the solar cars are only allowed 5kW hours maximum of stored energy. Everything else should come from the sun or, as the race rules state, “be recovered from the kinetic energy of the vehicle." Although the teams are indeed competing to be the first to the Adelaide finish line within four to five days, the key to it is the machine’s endurance. Limited in terms of the energy stored in the battery and only allowed to charge once at the starting point, the race becomes a battle to consume as less power as possible while going as fast as you can. There are seven mandatory check points scattered through the race route (where observers are changed and repairs can be done) but there’s no “gassing up" unlike at pit stops of a normal car race. Also, all teams must stop travelling at 5PM and set up camp in the desert or any location the race finds them. “The faster you go, the less efficient the car will be. Even if the solar cars can run at more than 100kms per hour it’s not good to do that because you will consume your battery power much earlier," explained Catalan. Promoting solar energy Running the race is of course a means to promote the feasibility of sun energy in the country. The whole idea behind the technology of a solar car is to hasten the development of alternatively-fuelled real world applications, eventually lessening dependency on fossil fuels. “We have a lot of the solar resource here," said Agustin. “It’s most viable in areas that can’t be reached by the grid, a very good way to light the outskirts. We hope people in charge will be looking at this more closely for uses in the local sector like agriculture and even in urban areas for lightening the load of commercial buildings." “This is the future," agreed Jong Jimenez, a representative of Sun Power Philippines. “With the help of the solar car race, I am very optimistic about the future of solar energy in the Philippines." — TJD, GMA News
Tags: solarcar, sikat2
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