Early August 2022
After attaining my AA at the State College of Florida (SCF) with the University of Florida Gator Engineering Program, I arrived to the University of Florida in the Fall of 2022 eager to get myself involved with whatever I could get my hands involved.
Enter the Solar Gators.
The Solar Gators are a student engineering design team with the purpose of spreading awareness for sustainable technology by creating a solar powered electric racecar for the Formula Sun Grand Prix.
Fall 2022 is when I first got involved and got the opportunity to start learning about various topics relevant to engineering shown below briefly. In the following spring of 2023, I continued those efforts and the Solar Gators won 1st place, which is the first time in history that the University of Florida or any Florida school has been able to win the Formula Sun Grand Prix.
Click here for the article: Solar Gators Make History
Click here for more info about the team: Solar Gators Website
Sales/Fundraising (2022-2024)
In October 2022, there was an announcement that funding was cut for our team in future.
Under the training of my senior members, I started learning the basics of cold email outreach, grant writing, and networking to obtain free materials or cash grants.
Taking further initiative, I reached out to various real estate agents like Juan Jaimes in the Tampa-Bay area and reviewing Alex Hormozi sales material which cut down my learning curve and improved my ability to sell and persuade.
Alex Hormozi with great online sales resources
Further down the line with more colds call under my belt, with advice from a former venture capitalist-turned professor, began networking with Angel Investors/ Philanthropists in the region alongside with other local brands.
Despite the many detours and obstacles along the way, the following occurred
Wholesale Pricing Discount with Clark Butler Plaza Lowes for all Solar Car purchases. (Roughly 40% discounts for all relevant materials)
Free tickets to baseball games and conference tickets for the leadership board of the Solar Gators (Roughly $1000).
Hardware Design
Maximum Power Point Tracking
Designing a Solar Car pulls from various components of the electrical and computer engineering curriculum, thus a different curriculum was made and taught to new members like myself. The Electrical Project Manager and system leads would mentor on design concepts and tools like Altium, soldering, and coding on STM 32’s to get us introduced to embedded systems.
Although it was preliminary work for a newcomer on the team, we were given the project of rewiring the whole car. This would include the High Voltage, Low Voltage, CAN-High, CAN-Low, Ground and other components of the car. The process of this experience would have allowed for me to gain a better understanding of basic hardware design. The curriculum was based on a mix between lectures, short-term mentorship and independent research.
With the curriculum that I was learning with Solar Car, I began to implement this into my learning with various projects that are based on Great Scott electronics lectures from YouTube.
Within the Solar Power electronics, there exists a converter system in order to be able to converter
See Hardware Design
