Further Reading
This page contains some additional material in the form of several pdf documents to help further your knowledge and understanding. You may have already come across some of the information covered by them elsewhere on the website but there’s sure to be bits of stuff in there not seen before.
Some of these are now a few years old and discuss regulations from previous years but a lot of the information is still highly relevant to today’s competition. The laws of physics are still the same after all.
Model Solar Car Design Guide 2017 – Ian Gardner
Model Solar Car Racing for Dummies, 2010 – John Jeffery
Model Solar Car Racing – Peter Harley
(Pending approval) Model Solar Cars: Optimising Their Performance – Stan Woithe
Several other files written by members of the national committee can be viewed below. These were published to inform participants of a few interesting solar panel characteristics that were observed during panel power testing at older competitions. Car teams are now provided with carefully calibrated solar panels for racing, so these papers are no longer of great importance, but they do still offer an interesting read and may give you something to think about if conducting any testing with alternate solar modules.
Low Fill Factor Panels – John Jeffery
Low Shunt Resistance Solar Cells – John Jeffery
Solar Panel Cracking – Ian Gardner
Well done if you managed to get through those files, that was quite some reading. Some of them may have also been a bit technical but don’t worry if you didn’t understand everything, this will come with time and experience as you continue your solar challenge journey and education.