06-22-10

Team PrISUm's Pat Sanderson makes electrical repairs during qualifying for this year's American Solar Challenge, an 1,100-mile race for student-designed and student-built solar cars. Team PrISUm photo.

Electrical problems spoil day two of Team PrISUm’s race across the Midwest

AMES, Iowa - Electrical problems inside their solar race car forced Team PrISUm to attempt five hours of roadside repairs during the second day of this year's 1,100-mile American Solar Challenge.

Those problems have moved Iowa State's solar race team back to 11th place in the 14-car field racing from Broken Arrow, Okla., to Naperville, Ill., this week.

Pat Sanderson, a senior from Iowa City who's majoring in mechanical engineering and is the team's project director, said the team wasn't able to fix the problem along the road. So team members loaded Anthelion (this year's car is named after the rare halo that sometimes appears opposite the sun) into the team's trailer and drove the last 100 miles to the day's checkpoint in Topeka, Kan.

That meant a significant time penalty for Team PrISUm. And the car still isn't working.

Sanderson said the problem is somewhere inside an electronics board that connects the power from the car's main battery pack, its auxiliary pack and the solar array.

"When the board doesn't work, our car doesn't work," Sanderson said.

But, when the electronics are working, Sanderson said the car is competitive and fast. He thinks without the electronics problems it could be in the middle of the pack. He also thinks it could finish among the leaders of the teams operating on lower budgets.

Trevor Dobbs, a junior from Woodbury, Minn., who's studying materials engineering and is the assistant project director for Team PrISUm, said 80 percent of the car is working just fine. But the other 20 percent is hard to fix in the middle of the race.

And what about Sunday's problems with overheated batteries? Is that still an issue?

Dobbs said the team was able to cut a hole in the bottom of the car that's allowing cooler air to vent the batteries. So that's one problem behind the team.

But the electronics are a different story, especially since race rules prevent the team from working on the car's battery pack overnight and the team is running out of parts.

So Team PrISUm needs a little luck?

"My way of putting it is I'll work as hard as I can and see if I can come up with something," Sanderson said.

That's right, Dobbs said, "We're not going to give up."

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