Today we had our first tutorial with our appointed tutor, Cameron Johnston. As a group we knew we wanted to concentrate on photovoltaics but we were not sure about the specific aspects we wanted to review. Cameron discussed the various project ideas with us such as thermal photovoltaics. We then undertook a literature review to narrow down the field of study by eliminating unsuitable project topics. By the end of the week it was concluded that there seems to be substantial interest in the topic of photovoltaic and fuel cell integration, so we have now narrowed the literature review down to concentrate all our efforts on this particular field.

This week was a reasonably productive and successful week as we contacted some industrial bodies such as BP Solarex, DTI and ESTU all of whom were very helpful and replied with relevant information, web pages to view and other people to contact. The week was spent preparing for the crit and each member of the group was assigned an individual area on which they carried out a literature review.

The crit was on 4th February at 2 p.m. and for our group it went reasonably well and our choice of topic, PV, electrolysis and hydrogen seasonal storage and fuel cells was approved. There were various other constructive comments about our presentation and these were that the presentation was not very structured, the proposed management structure would not work and we were also warned that the web as a resource must not be to heavily relied upon.

This week was particularly productive for the group as we were intr

Berta has been working on a theoretical desktop review of the characteristics and influences on the efficiency of the electrolyser. Gail is continuing her progress on H2 storage methods, which include a review of the feasibility of gaseous liquid and metal hydride options. Nicolas has been studying the various fuel cell types to systematically conclude which type would be most suitable for our system. He has also been preparing for his experimental work on the fuel cell located within the department.

This week was a reasonably successful and productive week for the group compared to last week

The papers we had ordered from the British Library were received at the beginning of the week and they have been particularly useful in helping us further develop an understanding of the system.

This week Nicolas also carried out the first fuel cell experiment to determine the alkaline fuel cell efficiency - the experiment was reasonably successful and produced efficiencies of around 30%. Berta and Theo got familiar with the matching software, 'MERIT'. Theo also continued working on the photovoltaic experimental work and Gail on the building integration of the system.

The rest of the week was spent preparing for Fridays crit. We found the crit very useful as it raised important issues such as risk management assessment of the system and the relevance of the experimental work. We realised that we must do more theoretical reading about the fuel cell to complement the experimental work.

This week we have all expressed concern at the rate time is passing as we still have a substantial amount of work to complete and only 5 full weeks left.

  This week has  Berta and Nicolas worked on the ‘MERIT’ supply / demand software package. 

Gail  worked on the building integration of the system and this included a review of the planning permission required and the building regulations that must be complied with for the system.  

Theo has been planning and designing the web page layout and also been doing more photovoltaic experimental work in the laboratory.

The group has now nearly completed the technical analysis of all the system components for PV – electrolysis - H₂ storage - fuel cell.  

This week we have made significant progress with our web page.  We have also worked on power conditioning of the system, the supply / demand matching using the MERIT software, an environmental impact analysis of PV – taking into account the life cycle of individual modules.

We had our fourth crit on Friday 17^th March where we presented this work and also some of the results obtained from the fuel cell experimental work. The crit was reasonably successful as the audience highlighted some constructive points, which we will consider.

After our crit the previous Friday, Cameron, our supervisor said he thought that for the group work to be successful we must have more faith in our project and work. We thought that if we appeared to have little confidence in our project it was because of the futuristic nature and the fact that it seemed to be prohibitably expensive.

For our theoretical dwelling to be fuelled completely on electricity, we would need highly rated (and thus expensive) fuel cells and inverters capable of absorbing and handling current surges. A figure of 30 kW for our inverters was calculated. It was decided that this would be too expensive and that if we took the thermal loading component (i.e. water and space heating) out of the system and dealt with them separately then our system would run on much less electricity.

The thermal components would be dealt with by the combination of hydrogen and this would be looked into. Some doubt remained about combusting hydrogen - it is very dangerous (especially in liquid form).

Otherwise, work was progressing satisfactorily. The web site was well underway and the matching is nearing completion by Nicolas. Gail was working on the environmental assessments. The project is at a crucial stage - time is short and everything depends on the matching, as this will size all our components. It was decided that we needed to step up a gear.

Everybody is starting to panic since the countdown has already started. Small problems have arisen from the demand-supply matching and economical assessment cannot be finished yet. Anyway it seems like it won't be a problem to sort everything out on time.

A few things have to be revised in the environmental impact since people seems to do not understand the way we have chosen to tackle it. The web page is looking better and several diagrams have been produced to accompany the text.

Our presentation was OK but we were asked to be more technical when talking to the audience as well. We have also been given some useful advice for the final presentation.

This week the pressure has really been on and the group unity has been considerably tested. The week has been spent completing aspects of the projects such as the economic assessment, collaborating all the data and extracting the significant conclusions. We have also spent several days organising the structure of the final presentation and preparing all acetates for our trial run, which was on Friday, 7th April at 2 p.m. The trial presentation was an overview of our final presentation that we intend to present in front of our audience on 13th April. The critics were generally quite constructive in their comments. There were a few problems with some of our acetates, which we intend to remedy over the weekend.

The final week has been a nightmare. Despite the project being nearly finished, all the tiny bits that needed to be fixed were so time consuming that we thought we'd never finish, specially web page formatting and presentation slides.

To avoid last minute surprises, the group has been practicing everyday the final presentation and has gone through the entire project again to make sure all details are covered.

Meetings with other groups have been really helpful to make us realise what were the weak points in our talk and hopefully they have been sorted out

At the end, it has been very satisfactory to see all the work done during the last twelve weeks finally coming together.