The Sustainable Energy Club has been officially reopened on January 28th, 2025 after being inactive for more than 12 months. In just two months, we have extended club membership from 0 to 105 people, with around 10 people coming to the weekly meetings.
As a club, Here's what our members have accomplished so far:
On our first couple meetings, our members came in having no knowledge in the Sustainable Energy Industry, and being afraid of touching small batteries and wires.
We have started by teaching them the fundamentals behind all energy devices: concepts of voltage, current, power, and types of connections.
Our members were learned fast, and only on practice!
Learning about electricity is fun! It is such an interesting concept: you can't really see it flowing in wires unless something goes wrong!
We also wanted to host Speaker events! Our First event wasn't a fail! It was just a busy Thursday before midterms, so we were proud to have 5 members come in! Besides, as the famous Belarusian saying goes: "The first served crepe always looks like life messed it up!"
Our tours that came next have been super fascinating! Our members really enjoyed seeing the technologies of the DC House (special thanks to Aaron!), and the Knoy Hall solar power station (special thanks to Dr. Bill Hutzel!).
Our most recent event has involved a speaker from !!! Lawrence Berkeley National Energy Lab !!!
We celebrated this achievement right before the Spring break, with a record speaker event attendance of 10 people (some are not seen here)! The presentation was very informative and contained a lot of detailed knowledge about biofuels industry.
So what about the Projects?
Here's what our members did in just (!) 6 meetings:
Learning about types of battery connections on paper doesn't work, you have to try it out yourself!
Here you can see a 400W battery system connected in parallel to the 400W solar panel system that outputs a little more than 80W, at 12V.
The system that we built but haven't taken a picture of is a 24V 400W solar panel system. The only change was the way of wiring solar panels and batteries, but the experience was necessary!
Love, The Sustainable Energy Club of Purdue Team
Credits:
The Sustainable Energy Club of Purdue