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  • Author Author: tariq.ahmad
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Project14 | Winners Announcement: Off the Grid Projects!

tariq.ahmad

The Off the Grid project competition challenged you to work on projects that help you easily get off the grid such as Gate opener control system, 8-10k Solar Array, Water Tank Monitoring, and Solar Monitoring Stations.  We had two really great projects by   who built a tropical beverage cooling mug and    with his mini solar powered temperature sensor, as well as, some great starts from  talking about his start on a ham radio and solar power charging station and    with their dead battery lamp.  For this contest,   we're going to split the prize pool between  and  .     

Congratulations to   and   you are the Grand Prize Winners and you win a $250 shopping cart!

Without further adieu here are your winners:

The Winners:

 Solar Powered Tropical Beverage Cooling Mug -Blog #1 - the concept by  

The vision for this Off the Grid project is all about a tropical island beach. No phone, no lights, no motorcar , only a couple luxuries: a beach chair, a fishing rod, a solar reflector grill or a wood beach fire for my seafood buffet, and a trusty solar powered mug that keeps your favorite beach beverage cool. Engineering style blogs follow, documenting the experiments and learning what it takes to build utopia.

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 Mini Solar Powered Wireless Temperature Sensor by   

This is very compact solar powered temperature sensor with resolution of 0.005°C and accuracy of 0.25°C. Measured temperature and few other service information are remotely transmitted using 868 MHz band to the gateway. The device has absolutely no battery. Instead of battery it relies only on the mini 35 x 14 mm (1.38 x 0.55 inch) solar cell and one supercapacitor which allows running it in field for several years without need of any maintenance.

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Keep Being Awesome and Thank You for your continued support of Project14!

Be sure to congratulate the Winners in the Comments Below! 

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  • Congrats   , it is an honor to share the winner platform with you.  All the projects are insighful. 

    This contest is a coincidental prelude of things to come. This week at work, I started working on an OFF THE GRID demo system using solar panels to power the 300V DC link of a 230 VAC VFD drive that automatically powers a water pump. My demo is only 1HP tho.

    Using a similar approach as in my Tropical Beverage project, I started by testing a pair of 100W 18V solar panels using resistive loads, checking power curves and performance in different outdoor conditions. Wired these solar panels in series and retested. I'm having alot of fun specifying all the plumbing too, pump, check valves, ball valves, pressure and flow transducers, tanks, etc.. :-)  The final version uses 17 solar panels in series to get that 300+ Vdc.

    I understand these OFF THE GRID pump systems are common around the vineyards in Spain and South America. 

  • in reply to robogary

    Congrats  . I also like sharing winner platform with you. I was thinking about it and it must be super hard to compare our projects and select which one is better since they are completly different even they have shared property - uses solar pannel. Splitting reward pool is the best solution of this situation I think. I think that  should post their forum post as blog instead. It was also very nice project.

  • in reply to misaz

    Judging is super hard, the projects submitted by E14 members are clever and well done. I can avoid judging by entering each competition.  gave us a break on this one so she could sun on the beach with her USB power meter  :-) 

  • in reply to robogary
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