Hello all! I am currently in Phase 1 of my research project, which, consists of me absorbing as much about solar, grid, and inverter technology as possible. My supervisor has provided me with a couple of books: Reinventing Fire and Solar Power Your Home for Dummies. Furthermore, I have pulled sources from slideshare.com, nrel.gov (the National Renewable Energy Lab), smartgrid.gov, and energy.gov (the Department of Energy).

Now that I have began researching, I can give a more detailed description of my research project. As I mentioned, my goal is to come up with a smart inverter for Interl. But what exactly is an inverter? And what makes it smart? An inverter converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC). Their most important application, on which I will be focusing, is to solar energy. When a solar panel converts the energy of the sun to electrical energy, it stores that electrical energy in a battery, which is DC. However, the power grid that the outlets are connected to are all AC; so the inverter is the bridge that connects the solar energy captured from the sun to the appliances in your home.

Current inverters fulfill their function of converting energy from DC to AC, but poorly. Many problems that current inverters pose include fluctuating power levels, dirty power, and weather-dependency. These three problems can be intertwined and can lead to serious problems. For example, after a week of changing weather (from cloudy to sunny), the power levels will spike and drop repeatedly, providing dirty power, which includes low power, power surges, changes in frequencies, etc., to the system. In the case of a hospital, for example, this dirty power can corrupt all the machines it is funneled to. A smart inverter, among other capabilities, would stabilize the power, voltage, and frequency levels while being more efficiently converting energy.

My next post (February 19) will further the background on inverters, grids, and solar energy that I uncover in the  next few day. Next week, I will be going to Intel for 2 weeks every day in order to work more closely with other solar engineers. Furthermore, I will be finishing Phase 1 of 4 next week and beginning the more interesting, hands-on research! As I mentioned, I will be interviewing workers from the DOE, Intel, SRP, and APS! I will keep you informed on how each interview goes and what I learn. Thanks for reading!

Signing off,
Kayvon Tadj