Our Activities: 26th August Meeting - Cameron Tuesley

Chair
Ian introduced himself as the President - Judy - you should lock him in for 2016

Visitors & guests
Cameron
Alf & Sue, back from their honeymoon in Bali

Apologies
Noel, Ron, Gerry & Jan, Kim, Helen

Makeups
Mark met Deborah Groves at Siem Reap - she is “stepping away” from the adopted village program

President's Report
Welcome visitors & guests & special welcome back to Alf & Sue - Alf seems to have some “renewed energy”

Working bee today at our shed at the Salvation Army - Alan is organising

Gordon Watson advised that our grant with Cal Pac has been approved at District Level.; We are looking at a “different approach” with our grant with RC Komaki

Men’s Shed is “progressing”

Speaker
Alf introduced Cameron who we were able to contact through Iain. Cameron has a Company in Brisbane called Integral, but is a bit local with parents living at Golden Beach.

Integral employs 35 specialists and has clients including the Gold Coast City Council & Energex. They solve complex environmental problems and have won numerous awards for Sustainability and Green IT. But his hobby is solar cars.

Cameron thanked Alf, He had a background including something about Canada and his mum was “a bit of a hippie”

Have you ever had sunburn - there’s a lot of energy in those rays. In fact, one day’s sunshine could power the whole world for 27 years. Australia, essential a huge desert, is perfect for this technology.

If we could harvest all the energy falling on 300x300km we could power the planet.

Integral was involved in the Climate Smart program which reached 350,000 homes and won a Qld IT award.

On a flight from London he said “let’s do this” and Team Arrow was born.
http://teamarrow.com.au/ The game is the World Solar Challenge, where 200kg solar powered cars race 3,000km north to south across Australia.

Apart from being fun, the Challenge teaches students and builds young engineers. It iOS a quiet achiever for using solar power, and started in the early 1980s. The early cars were solar but there was no battery technology back then.

Working with the car you are amazed that something which looks so simple could be so complex. For example, the tyres are 30 times more efficient than standard.

There is considerable expertise in Australia “in pockets”. An example is the Deep Sea Challenge movie being shot in Australia, and the sub being built in Sydney.

LSM is a Toowoomba company. This is where the shell of the car was “cooked”

The solar cells are double the efficiency of standard, and weigh seven kg.

The car uses 500 laptop batteries, which last six hours.

They arrived in Darwin after 12 months work. They had a 15 year old motor originally built by CSIRO with a $26,000 replacement value. They were a “dark horse” amid the world’s best, and came second last in the trials.

Their budget was slightly lower than some.

They had problems after 100km, with still 2000km to go. They ended up in seventh place

This is Kaz from UQ - a really cleaver guy with a couple of patents to his name, including lead free solder. Here he gets to do the menial task of watering the cells - they get too hot if left to their own devices when the car is stopped.

Caloundra is the top area for use of solar power.

Solar cells are getting cheaper. The graph shows that as technology improves, it will soon be cheaper than natural gas, and then coal before 2020.

At UQ, their array powers the whole university.

For passenger cars battery are lagging. US Tesla model S has 400km range and costs $2 to fill up. Costs $100K in Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors

Nissan has fast charge. It is also the third fastest Nissan
http://www.nissan.com.au/Cars-Vehicles/LEAF/Overview

Prius has been going for 8-10 years, and their batteries are still OK.