Johannesburg 17 October 2023 Imagine a scenario where you cannot get your daily eggs and bacon, or worse yet, cannot get your favourite chicken meal because of load shedding and stolen solar components.

In the Free State it is a reality where chicken farmers are losing millions of rands every month. Due to them being load shed at midday every day, the fans in the chicken coop stop working, leading to the chickens overheating and dying.

After this happened a few times, the farmers decided to explore solar solutions and invested about a million rand in a system that would still be able to power the fans on their farms and allow the chickens to thrive in a cool environment.

However, a week later the batteries that are part of the solar solution were stolen, the fans stopped working and the chickens still died. The farmers realised that they needed a solution where one could power the fans in the chicken coop without batteries. 

Solving the problem

Dr Neil Croft, a senior lecturer at Belgium Campus, took on this real-world case and started working on a solution that would be able to deliver a comprehensive and inexpensive solution to the farmers' problem of their chickens dying.

The solution to this real-world problem is a solar solution that works without the need of a battery and an inverter. Dr Croft challenged himself and his students "to get power directly to the fan via a motor, so when the sun is shining you can still run the fan to keep your chicken coop cool".

Dr Croft's solution was to seek out solar panels that run off direct current. He then replaced the inverter with a voltage regulator, which means the solar panels are connected to the voltage regulator, which allows you the power to run what you need off it. This solution can be applied to the chicken coop and therefore powers the fan and keeps the chicken coop cool, using components that can be safely secured and acquired without the need for expensive batteries. This saves the chicken farmers money.

Feeding off this successful pilot, Dr Croft is now testing if the solution can be applied to computers.

He explains: "The next part of what I'm testing is where you have solar panels that go into a step-down converter, from 40 volts to 24 volts or 12 volts, that goes directly into your ATX power supply – which is what your computer uses to power your motherboard. The converter regulates your power, meaning you can run a computer directly off a solar panel."

One solution, many applications

From a technical standpoint the process to power a computer directly from a solar panel without a battery and without an inverter, one would need a specialised DC-DC voltage regulator and an DC-ATX power supply. An overview of the process includes:

• Solar Panel: Start with a solar panel that generates around +/-40V DC closed circuit volatge. Solar panels generate variable voltage depending on sunlight intensity, the step-down converter acts as a DC-DC voltage regulator.
  
  
• DC-DC Voltage Regulator: The regulator is used to step-down the solar panel's output voltage from +/-40V to the required 24V for the ATX power supply. These voltage regulators are available in various types, such as buck converters, and they can efficiently convert higher voltage to lower voltage with minimal power loss.
  
  
• ATX Power Supply: The 24V output from the DC-DC voltage regulator will be connected to the ATX power supply's 24-pin or 20+4-pin motherboard connector. The ATX power supply will need to be modified to turn on without being connected to a motherboard. This is typically done by bridging the green wire (PS_ON) and a black wire (COM) on the ATX connector.
  
  
• ATX Power Supply Output: An ATX power supply typically provides various DC voltages (e.g., +3.3V, +5V, +12V) and AC voltage (for standby power). The appropriate cables and connectors need to be identified to power your computer components (motherboard, CPU, GPU, drives, etc.) with the 24V input. Total output can either be 500W or 800W.

Dr Croft states that this system can be used for remote monitoring sites, to power Internet of Things devices, cellphones, a drone docking station, and other devices.

These solutions exist in theory, however, practical application and experimentation are needed to allow real-world problems to be solved with real-world solutions, and this is what Dr Croft and his students at Belgium Campus are engaged in.

The applications that have been envisioned range from self-cleaning solar panels – where AI technology powered by the solar panel itself monitors the solar panels and determines when it needs to be cleaned and effects this – to AI powered cameras, that monitor the area around the solar panels and sends a notification if anyone or anything gets too close to solar panel to prevent damage and harm.

Dr Croft is also looking into solutions that allow energy to be stored and used when there is no sunlight, without the need for a battery.

"There's always these ideas that come to mind, and we ask if this can work or not. Because people are stealing components, we need to find inexpensive solutions to these problems. And one of them is to get solar working directly without certain components," he says. 

ABOUT BELGIUM CAMPUS ITVERSITY NPC 

Belgium Campus is a South Africa-based pioneering ITversity in South Africa that helps raise the bar in private education in the ICT industry. The higher education institution collaborates with the industry to provide students with the financial support necessary to forge successful futures. Well-established and renowned, it has campuses in Pretoria, Kempton Park, and a newly opened campus in Stellenbosch. Its success stems from a Participative Development Model of Education which accounts for the needs of students, industry, academia, government, and society alike, resulting in demand-driven, student-centred, and business-focused higher learning. 

ISSUED ON BEHALF OF BELGIUM CAMPUS 

For more information contact:
Lunice Johnston Communications
Lunice Johnston
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