An e-rickshaw that runs with solar power

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 11

Students of Mechanical Engineering Department of Global Group of Institutes have successfully designed and fabricated solar-powered e-rickshaw. The team, led by Jobanpreet Singh, Ankush Kumar, Chetan Kumar, Karandeep Singh, Karamjit Singh, along with their guide Prof Parminderjit Singh, said the vehicle is aesthetically attractive and aerodynamic, besides being environment-friendly.

A major limitation of the existing system is that e-rickshaws are generally charged during the night only and driver’s daily earning is restricted by the range. After market research, they concluded that the standard e-rickshaw runs for 50-70 km in a day on completely charged four 110 AH factory fitted batteries. They also noted that it takes around eight hours to recharge the fully depleted batteries by connecting to power source and nearly 6-7 units of electricity are consumed for recharging the batteries, taking the annual consumption to around 2000 units.

After initial R&D and extensive mathematical calculations, the students decided to remove the existing roof of the e-rickshaw and replace it with four customised light weight and efficient solar panels. To incorporate the same, various structural changes were done to the existing frame of e-rickshaw. The solar panels were connected to batteries via solar charge controller, which will manage the power going into the battery bank from the solar array.

The cost of the project is around Rs 17,800 and same can be recovered in year. Dr Akashdeep Singh, Vice-Chairman, Global Group of Institutes (GGI), while appreciating the efforts of the students and faculty, said the above project will reduce the carbon footprints by 1260 pounds annually per e-rickshaw. He opined that if the same is implemented by all e-rickshaws plying in the holy city, it will not only drastically reduce the dependence on thermally generated electricity but will also help the drivers earn more.

Dr MS Saini, Director, GGI, said the complete working modifications of the vehicle were done within the resources available to them at the High-Performance Automobiles, Center of Excellence of Global Institutes using the 3D Autocad Software of CREO 2.0. The design and fabrication was done under the guidance of faculty of Mechanical Engineering.