Career

During my time in Honduras, I worked as a part of the Wind Turbine and Electricity Distribution Upgrade Team. Before the trip, my team had to extensive research into AC power systems, DC power systems, 3 phase systems, inverters, charge controllers, and circuit breaker logic. I believe that having experience in all of these areas will prove invaluable to me in the future. Our team successfully installed a slip ring, a new black box for the wind turbine including, 2 new 12V deep cycle batteries, a charge controller, an inverter, a photocell and a manual brake. The wind turbine now power a new load of high efficiency LED light bulbs that are powered for approximately 12 hours. According to our calculations, the implemented system will save Montana de Luz (the orphanage that we worked at) approximately $480 a year in electricity costs. Additionally, we evaluated the electricity distribution system and have made suggestions for the system. In order to make these suggestions, we took hourly current readings from the main breaker room over the course of a day, as well as mapped out the entire known breaker system. These diagrams and data have been given to the staff at the orphanage and we are working to implement our recommendations.