The GLACIER k-12 outreach project

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Manufacturer's Links

Power Subsystem

• Solarex solar panels (four 30W modules).
• Marlec Rutland Furlmatic 910 wind generators (60-80W at 12 knots) purchased from Trillium Windmills. We have had the mfg. repack the bearings with a low-temperature grease.
• Ampair 100 Marine windcharger (similar specs to Marlec). This wind generator does not "furl" (i.e. spin out of the wind, as does the Rutland). Rather, the high impedance windings are designed to be inefficient at high currents and will simply load down the alternator. The drawback, of course, is that at low wind speeds there is a relatively higher impedance than necessary.

We noticed that the Marlec will spin at lower wind speeds (3 m/s) than the Ampaire will. The Ampaire will start to spin at about 5-6 m/s. We chose to use two different wind generators at each site so that if there is a systematic failure mode for a particular manufacturer, it will not affect both wind gens.

The PVs and Wind Generators charge batteries, with excess power being dumped to heat the system. We designed a custom charge/heat/dump/load controller at PSU that encapsulates all these functions in two custom printed-circuit boards mounted to machined aluminum plates two of which are inside the box and one is outside.

Electronics and Computer

• 386 single-board computer from Winsystems, Inc.
• Quad serial port board from Sealevel Systems.
• Power supply board from Tri-M, Inc.
• Disk heater and low-temperature cutoff board designed and manufactured at PSU.
• 8 GB hard disks from Maxtor.
• IDE removeable sled and frame from Kingston Technology.
• Aluminum instrument case from xxx with faceplate milled at PSU.

Penn State Links

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Questions or Comments? Send email to Sridhar Anandakrishnan