ECE.11 – Electrical Design For Thermal Storage System

• Laila Almalek
• Sovansotra Hun
• Thammakorn Juntarasuwan
• Olusegun Williams

According to The World Health Organization, approximately 2.4 billion people worldwide cook with biomass and coal. As of 2020, approximately 3.2 million die annually due to household air pollution associated with cooking. A safer alternative to biomass cooking is using solar energy, a naturally existing resource. Solar energy can provide a safe, smoke-free alternative method of cooking and facilitate auxiliary functions like water purification and lighting. Although solar cooking is a very safe cooking alternative, there are a lot of companies that make their solar cooking products too expensive or would inefficiently use the gathered solar energy. Our task was to design the electrical system for a stored solar thermal energy system that uses its energy optimally and is affordable to consumers in low-income countries. We created an intelligent switching system for heating and charging our expandable battery. We also designed an auxiliary power system with 1 type A and 1 type C usb port, providing 15 watts of DC output power. We have also done preliminary work on integrating an open source maximum power point tracking system into our device. Additionally, it has an easy to use interface with temperature and power monitoring and controls to adjust features. Therefore, with the design, we can efficiently use the solar energy of the thermal storage system.