Our Overall Design Process
- Discovered the problem space through discussions with researchers and professionals
- Ryan Berry and his individual research
- Professor Van Asselt and her area of research
- Scott Baker from PJM
- Bruce Ferretti the Director of Plant Operations and Physical Planning at Lafayette College
- Researched the background and context of the problem space
- At this point, we knew that we were looking to develop an energy storage system with the incentive to solve the wasted renewable energy problem
- Introduced to the idea of a CAES system
- Researched the concept of our design (CAES) and justified our selection
- Divided our design into subsystems and did further research(compressor, heat exchanger, turbine/generator)
- Finalized the design for each subsystem and constructed each prototype
- Listed the specifications that needed to be met
- Assembled the subsystems to create a single prototype
- Performed testing on each subsystem and the system as a whole
- Analyzed the results and drew conclusions
Considering the background of our problem space and solution, we believe that we made the right decision in following this outline. Starting with understanding the problem space has helped us widen the options of deriving a solution. Renewable energy is a topic that is becoming the center of attention, accompanied by many opportunities for engineering investment. From researching, we found out that this topic was huge, and required a lot of narrowing down for us to land on a particular problem. This initial process has helped us learn a lot about the problem and its surrounding context, which led us to derive a unique yet justifiable solution. If it were the other way around, we probably would have been limited with the variety of problem spaces we could look into and be fixated or biased towards the initial idea for a solution. We believe that understanding the background first has helped us eliminate this bias and approach the project with an open-minded attitude.
It is also important to note that the theme of energy was predefined for the project, and we all decided to join this group for that reason. All group members had an interest/passion for energy, and we all had ideas coming into it. Therefore it made more sense for us to do some preliminary research, and have everyone be on the same page before ideas started clashing against one another.
Team Breakdown
Our team is broken down by overall team roles, sub-teams, and sub-team roles
Put faces to the names at our Meet the Team page, here
Schedule
Our team utilized a Gantt chart to keep track of project and subteam progress, as well as to establish an overall timeline. We kept track of tasks for the entire project such as midyear poster session and progress report, specifications, prototype testing report, and smaller tasks such as the dates for our preliminary stakeholder interviews. Each subteam kept track of their progress from preliminary problem research and design, to final prototyping and testing. This style of scheduling allowed each subteam to work with each other and have everything ready to connect and test simultaneously. Having gaps between the completion of each subteam’s design allowed members to focus on other aspects of the project, such as miscellaneous purchasing, extra data acquisition, and deliverable organization. Throughout the past year, each team has remained on track, and the overall deliverables were completed in a timely manner. As a team, we are ahead of schedule and have the ability to complete more testing than initially planned.
Our Gantt Chart includes the progress of our three subteams, as well as our overall deliverable schedule.
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- Green = completed tasks
- Red = future uncompleted tasks
- Checkmarks = denote when the task was completed
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