Each year at UNH, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Seniors join with other engineering disciplines in the Undergraduate Research Conference (URC). Here they present their research projects that they have been working on for months, some even up to a year. This year, the projects range from renewable energy to digital imaging processing to audio noise canceling.

One interesting project was “InterFACE”, which utilizes digital image processing to track the movement of a face. It then uses that data to recreate the motion in a robotic head sculpture. The pictures below depicts their system design.

Another project which incorporated electrical design was the “Tidal Power Generation”. This project was a combined effort of the Mechanical, Ocean and Electrical Engineering Departments. Here the idea of utilizing tidal action, and the related currents, to convert into electrical power by way of a turbine was investigated.

Above we see the display of the system, as well as a demonstration of the theory behind the project.

Overall, the conference was exciting and impressive, and the Seniors really worked hard to put forth their best efforts. For both myself and Mark Taipan, we were especially excited due to our recent award of a SURF Grant for the summer of 2008 to work on our project Kingsbury Location Awareness System (KLAS). We will be presenting our project at the URC next year, and so it was very helpful to see this year’s projects which will help us plan our presentation for next year.

Matthew Lape

Have you heard the argument that solar palens take more energy to manufacture than they can actually produce during their useful lives? Here is an article that takes on this argument and shows that it’s wrong. Go solar panels!

Andrew Kun

Are you planning to watch the Live Earth concert on Saturday, 7/7/07? To learn more about efforts to solve the global climate crisis you can check out Al Gore’s website. The website also has a link to Live Earth.

Andrew Kun

PBS aired an interesting show on solar power. It’s called Saved by the Sun, and it’s part of the NOVA programs. The show discussed innovative approaches to making solar energy part of the power production landscape. One approach is that of Germany, where solar power is subsidized by the government. While subsidies cost taxpayer money (electricity is more expensive in Germany than in other European countries), in this case they have several beneficial effects. First of all, solar panels are now cheaper, due to the fact that many more are being manufactured to keep up with the demand in Germany. The demand is there because the subsidies make sure that investing in solar power pays off. Germans also benefit from the jobs created (about 140,000) and of course from the intellectual property generated by the solar energy companies which will likely be leaders in the field for a while.

Sun Edison, a US company, takes a different approach. They offer a way for companies and government agencies to install solar panels without having to foot the up-front costs. Instead, Sun Edison pays for the installation, while the customer agrees to buy the electricity produced by the panels at a set price for a period of time (e.g. for 20 years). The customer has little up-front expenses and it can count on stable prices for a long period of time. Sun Edison also does well, since it knows what its costs and income will be for the same long period of time.

Let’s hope we see more examples like these soon.

Andrew Kun