SYNERGY Between CARC, EEE Dept. BRAC University and IDCOL

Power Conservation for Electrically Assisted Rickshaw Vans with PV Support, Torque Sensor Paddle

A Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) is working on a joint program with Control & Applications Research Centre (CARC) of BRAC University on “Power Conservation for Electrically Assisted Rickshaw Vans with PV Support, Torque Sensor Paddle and the Solar Battery Charging Station- A Complete Off-Grid Solution”. On August 2, 2015, Mr. Mahmood Malik, the CEO of IDCOL signed the agreement for collaboration. Dr. A. K. M. Abdul Malek Azad, the CARC director and a professor in the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering was also there on behalf of BRAC University. The project comprises of the implementation and observation of the 15 units of solar powered electric vans in the rural areas of Bangladesh. IDCOL is a government based organization promoting solar power usage in Bangladesh.

It is indeed a great achievement for CARC to get the responsibility of such project implementation. Dr. Azad and the responsible CARC key members, have worked diligently to make the project a success. All the units have been completely manufactured, field tests conducted and resigning have been also done based on the feedbacks of the community. Already the final project report submitted to IDCOL.

SYNERGY Between CARC, EEE Dept. BRAC University and BRAC HNPP

Solar Powered Vehicles in Savar

Control & Applications Research Centre (CARC) BRAC University and BRAC Health is undergoing a collaboration program on one of the on-going projects of the centre, solar electric ambulance van. The ambulance vans provided by CARC BRAC University through IDCOL Project will be used by Health, Nutrition and Population Programme of BRAC for their purpose. The thesis students working on Solar ambulance Van has already conducted field test and performance analysis. Based on their result an improved design of ambulance van has been made CARC is looking forward to and effective and successful collaboration of the project.

SYNERGY Between CARC, EEE Dept. BRAC University and CRP

Project on Electric Wheelchair

On 13th December 2015 BRACU Research and Project Engineers, Ataur Rahman, Jaber Al Rashid and Sheri Jahan Chowdhury working under Control & Applications Research Centre (CARC) went to Centre of Rehabilitation for the Paralysed (CRP), Savar, for the delivery of the Torque Sensor Assisted Electric Wheelchair with Solar Charger Kit. Earlier there was a MoU signing where the Executive Director of CRP Md. Shafiq-ul Islam, and the Registrar of BRACU Muhammad Sahool Afzal agreed upon a collaboration between the two institutions for the development of the electric wheelchair. Dr. Valerie Taylor, greatly appreciated the project. For inspection, she herself rode the vehicles around the premises.

Industrial Partner Beevatech Ltd.

Since the signing of MoU in 2012 between CARC and Beevatech Ltd. Various projects have been involved with various research projects including Solar Battery Charging Station, Solar Powered Electric Vehicles, Solar powered Wheelchair and so on. The two organisations share the common goal of making the electric vehicles more available in the country removing the government ban. Several publications have been made in this regard.

Beevatech has also assisted in the manufacture of the electric vans of the IDCOL projects.

Professional Affiliation with IEEE SIGHT USA

CARC is recognized in the international community as the CARG SIGHT (Bangladesh), an organisation funded by IEEE SIGHT USA for various research activities based on humanitarian projects. It provided the seed money required for research on the prototypes of the electric vans, human hauler and ambulance van namely, as well as the electric wheelchair. The successful manufacture of the prototypes of the electric vans have rendered CARC to launch pilot project in collaboration with IDCOL. CARC is looking forward to the same aftermath with all other projects with the goal of a sustainability as well as commercialization to benefit the community.

CARG project in collaboration with BEEVATECH LTD.

Furthering the industry-university links formed by BRAC University, Control & Applications Research Group (CARG) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between CARG and BEEVATECH LTD. This is in concern with the Solar Battery Charging Station (SBCS) project that CARG has undertaken with the purpose of designing a solar powered battery charging station for electrically assisted power rickshaws that BEEVATECH LTD has pioneered in Bangladesh. BEEVATECH LTD, established in 2001, is the first professional electrically assist rickshaw manufacturer in Bangladesh. Electrically assisted power rickshaws have gained tremendous popularity in Dhaka city due to their speed and low fare. But it has been claimed, by the Ministries of Industries, as highly parasitic on the already overloaded national electricity grid and thus mass usage of the rickshaw has not yet been approved. In response to this situation, CARG has designed a solar power battery charging station that frees the national grid from charging the rickshaws and plans on initiating a 6 month long pilot project on their design on the BRACU campus. Several publications have already been made on the research done for this project. Reports of this pilot project will be presented to the Ministry of Industries in an effort to gain the approval for launching the rickshaws throughout the whole country.

Following the signing of the MOU in February between CARG and BEEVATECH LTD the Solar Battery Charging Station (SBCS) is approved by BRAC University and fund has been granted by the university. The pilot project, planned for 6 months, features implementing a 1kW solar powered station. The project not only takes a significant load of the national grid but opens up a way for CARG to build an industrial link with BEEVATECH LTD. The pilot project would lead to implementation of the main Solar Battery Charging Station project in real life scale to remote places in Bangladesh that would boost socio-economic condition in the region by providing cheap electricity.

SYNERGY Program between EEE Department, BRAC University and BRAC Solar

Bangladesh is a country, where the people in the remote rural areas have to rely on fuel basically kerosene based lighting to bring minimal lighting services in their homes. The replacement of fuel based lighting can be done in a sustainable way by using the existing and environmentally friendly renewable energy sources like solar PV technology. This sustainable way of lighting many villages in Bangladesh is expected to improve the general living standard of the communities, contributing significantly to health, education. To provide electricity in the rural areas BRAC Solar Energy Program is initiated under BRAC foundation in 1998. In this study we emphasized on the performance of BRAC CARG (Control & Applications Research Group) undertook the first synergy assignment in collaboration with BRAC Solar and completed the project within one week. For the purpose of this assignment, BRAC Solar provided CARG with fourteen solar panels from three different companies, in order to determine performance of each panel. The power rating of these panels varied from 40W to 85W. In order to complete this project, we created a testing environment in our electronics lab. The testing environment consisted of a sun simulator, which is a box was wrapped with aluminium paper from inside. Instead of using sun light, bulbs were installed inside the box. The sun simulator is used as a light source to provide incident radiation (100,000 Lux) to excite the solar panel. Other equipments such as a 2KW power supply, lux-meter, multi-meter etc. were also used to complete the experiment. After taking the data for all panels, we submitted a full scale report along with I-V characteristics curve, P-V characteristics curve for each panel and also a comparative study of all the Solar Panels. The project was successfully completed, and we hope that in future we will have more opportunities to work in such projects with BRAC Solar.

Authorized testing laboratory of Solar Home System components for IDCOL

The Solar Energy Program launched by the Infrastructure Development Company Ltd. (IDCOL) has the mission of fulfilling the basic electrical needs of rural regions of Bangladesh through wide spreading the use of Solar Home Systems (SHS) by the year 2020. IDCOL through discharging social responsibility of the government, their Partner Organizations (POs) through their access to grass root levels, private suppliers through their dynamism and academics through their professionalism and research have contributed in designing a system which has so far been very well accepted by the target group.But due to the numerous components manufacturers (local and foreign) the resulting system contains components that vary greatly in all parameters varying the overall quality from organization to organization creating instability in the quality of the system. This instability in product quality is increasing with the increase number of SHS installation and thus the system efficiency, reliability and popularity is failing. CARG has been conducting research on quality development and sustainable utility of renewable energy by providing quality testing. It is recognized testing authority of SHS components for IDCOL. The laboratories of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and at BRAC University are authorized to perform tests on the SHS components (PV module, charge controller, battery and lights) to determine quality of a device. CARG has put together a team, head by Dr. AKM Abdul Malek Azad, to develop procedures meeting the international standards e.g. CIE, IEEE, etc. and perform tests of the SHS components.

Testing of SHS Components

PV Module Quality assurance of the PV module is perhaps of the greatest importance as it is the most expensive of all the components and as it is the device that supplies the whole system with clean and green energy. PV modules are tested for their performance, basically, in terms of maximum power supply capability and the module's energy conversion efficiency. The tests are conducted directly under the sun to ensure that the proper testing conditions, as specified by IDCOL, are complied with. An automated system has been developed by a research group under CARG for measuring, logging and processing the data to provide the necessary results. Characteristic graphs are then derived from the results to show the performance of the PV module. The system has built in sensors that give the user a measurement of the irradiation, temperature and air flow around the PV module which is vital for monitoring the testing conditions.

CARG has been conducting research on quality development and sustainable utility of renewable energy by providing quality testing. It is recognized testing authority of SHS components for IDCOL. The laboratories of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and at BRAC University are authorized to perform tests on the SHS components (PV module, charge controller, battery and lights) to determine quality of a device. CARG has put together a team, head by Dr. AKM Abdul Malek Azad, to develop procedures meeting the international standards e.g. CIE, IEEE, etc. and perform tests of



Charge Controllers The charge controller is the brain and as well as the most error prone device of the solar home system and development of controllers has been a focus of CARG. It determines the flow of energy converted from the sun to the battery and/or the loads and controls the charging-discharging cycles of the battery. Connecting and disconnecting the battery at the proper charge state is of absolute vitality for keeping the battery out of harm's way. Its inability to protect itself and from preventing any fire due to short circuit in case the battery is connected is reverse or due to a high current surge can prove fatal for the system user. Manufactured mostly locally, charge controllers have the highest instability in their performance. Tests are performed to check the above parameter in very controlled manner inside the laboratories of BRAC University to determine its quality. Specifications for testing charge controller are supplied by IDCOL.

Batteries Batteries are the most troublesome of all the components as improper use and maintenance of it can not only cost a lot but may cause health hazards. It is very important to accurately determine a batteries nominal capacity to know its operational limits. Determining its charging and discharging thresholds is perhaps of utmost important as operating the battery beyond those boundaries may cause permanent and serious damage to the battery.Procedures to determine each of these parameters need to be repeated numerous charge-discharge cycles to be performed in different patterns and conditions. Testing of a battery could take days or weeks depending of the test being performed. Although numerous research on battery characteristics have been performed it is till today one of the most difficult components of SHS to characterize and perform tests on.

Fluorescent and LED Lamps Solar home systems have lamps specially designed for the purpose. Though these lights are low powered compared to regular fluorescent lamps, they can supply relatively high measure of lumen. The ballasts driver circuits used in these lamps need to be highly efficient to prevent power loss and at the same time have to be able to protect itself during faulty connections. Tests are also performed to confirm a lamp's rated power consumption, efficiency and in case of the Fluorescent lamps the ballast output wave shapes LED lights need the colour of their lamps checked out as LED lamps can emit light over a wide range of colour. These LED lights in particular have very high life time, high efficacy (lumen per watt) and low power consumption, which makes them very ideal for solar home systems.