The great pause - Pondering empowerment post Corona virus lockdown

During this pause in the human experiment of infinite growth on a finite planet, we all have time to ponder.  Questions like, how should we empower society as we emerge from the corona virus lockdown and what sort of benefits might we expect and hope for from this empowerment?

Something to hope for or just an interesting picture?
Airspeeder motorsport - a mixture of science fiction and gaming

Let's take a moment to further explore empowerment of individuals, how might we do this and what results might we expect.  There are already some pretty well understood candidates (and logically it seems many have self reinforcing aspects for the goal at hand), here are some good examples:

• UBI providing individual freedom and hence more room for creativity
• Free Education to degree level, hence encouraging and satisfying a thirst for knowledge
• Government using and encouraging Open Source and Open Data
• Prioritise walking and cycling, hence improving health, fitness, mobility, community connections and happiness

Plus, what if we combine these with wise long term environmental and economic goals (doughnut economics style):

• Encourage and support regenerative agriculture
• Strive towards a 100% renewable electricity supply
• Electrifying rail and road transportation (apart from maybe some aspects of emergency services)
• Restoring the health of our rivers and our oceans 

With this new world fully embraced, what might this look like over time:

• A healthy environment in balance with human society?
• Increased local capabilities and resilience?
• Increased time for important stuff like friends and family?
• High levels of innovation and hence productivity?
• Increased focus on digital tourism and digital sports events (e.g. where digital experience is the product, think visually realistic and physically active esports, think virtual spectator mixed with photo realistic virtual experiences extrapolated to tourism and new high tech sporting areas)?
  
• Increased reverence for nature and the outdoors (where international tourism for pure physical outdoor experiences becomes a premium highly sought after product)?
• Increasingly complex and interconnected local society (more holistic)?
• A more equal society?
• Increasing richness in art and culture?
• Increased general interest in wondering about life, the universe and our place in it?
• People are energized and alive with tangible opportunities to participate and thrive in society?
• A society that treats Earth as our valued and cherished home, but increasingly looks beyond our home planet for the future?

I'll leave you to ponder these questions or to create your own list of thoughts and ideas.  Either way, I'm sure you will continue to make good use of your very own and very valuable corona-induced dilated time bubble.

University of Canterbury Motorsport (UCM)

Greenstage is proud to be supporting the University of Canterbury Motorsport team with their first full electric entry in the Formula SAE competition.  They have put together a beast of a car which is looking likely to do the business!

UCM's 2016 Formula SAE entry 

Earlier in the year Greenstage provided advice on battery pack building and the UCM team paid a few visits to make use of our Myachi Unitech battery welder (which we use for nickle or copper foil welding during pack building with 18650 or 26650 cells).

The engineering skills and quick iterations and improvements in the UCM pack designs were impressive.

UCM engineers in action

It's pleasing to see these skills and capabilities being fostered by University of Canterbury.  I would strongly recommend any budding Engineering student to get involved in a Formula SAE team if they get the chance (especially if it's electric).

Good luck to the UCM team as they head into the competition phase!

Switch EV is go! (part 3)

The Greenstage Team has been helping Switch EV with final tuning and testing on their Electric Holden Ute.  We decided to capture some of the action and we have put together a little montage, with a hint to what's coming next as well.



If you're after more information, check out earlier Switch EV blog posts part 1 and part 2.

Enjoy!

KiwiAC driving Switch EV Induction motor … Part 2: Motor Control

Following on from our bench testing earlier in June, Switch EV have installed their motor into their test vehicle and undergone some driveway testing. Sorry no video or photos this time, just output logs turned into pretty graphs (go LibreOffice!)
At the most basic level we are controlling motor current. Our serial output is not fast enough to report every current measurement (two performed every 12kHz), but we can see if the current is behaving within the region we expect. First we can compare the requested current output magnitude, vs raw, directly sampled phase currents. The vertical axis is a signed internal scale, where 32700 is approximately 1000 Amps.

Here you can see that every reported current is within the magnitude requested. Because of stroboscopic effects, (sampling windows and AC sinusoidal waveforms etc) it is expected that we would see values less than requested current.

Delving into the Motor Model at the heart of Field Oriented Control, we can check that the two current vectors, (magnetic flux producing Id and torque producing Iq) are controlling:  

Here, the error between requested Id and Iq are plotted as DId and Diq. The error is around 1%, which equates to a output Torque error of about 0.01% (output Torque is proportional to motor flux times torque current).
At the moment, we are controlling Flux and Torque to equal throttle position (thick grey line). Flux (the green line) should always be positive however, (as two negative numbers would multiply to a positive torque). We have set the throttle zero position to produce regen torque, to approximate engine braking, but only while moving. You can see at 175 seconds when the vehicle was stopped that the torque and flux trending to zero, no longer following the throttle position. A small acceleration occurs from 184-193 seconds, and a much greater one at 205 seconds.

This final graph shows power in the controllers DC bus, versus the calculated mechanical motor power (estimated torque times motor speed) and an estimation of the inverter and motor AC conduction losses. At the time the car was traversing undulating terrain, so change in speed does not correspond that well to delivered power.
Finally, a big thanks to Lachlan for putting together the data extraction scripts that made these graphs possible and to Switch EV for building such a great EV!
Stay tuned, driving videos coming soon...

Saker GS750V motor and wheel rotation!

Today Ed, Mark and myself (with visits from Tom, Tabitha and Frank) achieved what we have been waiting nearly 12 months for. We had the GS750V powered up and turning it's own wheels!

Well done guys!!! This is an awesome achievement. Thanks to all that have helped us in getting to this point, both locally and internationally.

Read on for more details...

Our plan had the day broken into 4 phases:
1) Re-test the 30V test rig setup after it had been relocated from the software dev environment.
2) Test the 1.1kW motor from the test rig with the 150V test pack.
3) Lunch and forgotten encoder cable provided by Kirstin :)
4) Upgrade the 1.1kW motor to the Siemens motor in the GS750V and watch the wheels turn!

The setup we had is still very much a work in progress since the STM32 and Tumanako control board is not yet installed in the inverter casing. Hence the inverter and the control board where setup on a table beside the car for this test. The contactors where situated in a temporary but secure location which was convenient to get the power from the battery to the inverter.

You can see the setup we had for phase 2 in the photo below:
After a successful morning and a smiling visit from Kirstin, we moved into the business end of the day. We jacked the car onto blocks and connected up the Siemens 1PV5135 WS28 motor, which is already mounted in the car and connected to the gearbox. After an initial juddery rotation and a blown fuse (test pack fuse is only 30A so we don't stress the batteries), Ed discovered the encoder was hooked up incorrectly. So, rather than simply replacing the fuse, Mark upgraded it to a breaker which is resetable if something goes wrong and also easily used to make the pack safe during maintenance. Thank you Mark!

After addressing the encoder wiring and increasing the flux limits on our torque control, we got some very smooth motor control indeed. Check it out (please excuse the battle Ed is having with the forward/reverse torque control POT we had setup for the test in this video):


So, it's the home straight now! We need to complete the single Tumanako control board, finish off the wiring loom and complete the associated vehicle control software (adding additional safety checks and vehicle loom IO). Then we will be ready for dyno tuning (motor parameters need work) and of course squeezing in the first test drive :)

Also, expect to see a high quality video of todays test uploaded in the next couple of days. I'm currently looking for a cable from my sons video camera that I borrowed!? I hope I don't get into trouble :)

-Philip

Day 8

It was very cold this morning and it seemed to get colder as the day went on (winter is fighting back).

Today Bruce focused on finishing the half shafts (the car won't be going far without these!). I spent some time organising a sign writer to make decals of the sponsor's logos to go on the car. This included sizing them up and making a pattern for the logo going on the top of the front windscreen.

The radiator turned up today. This encouraged me to look at the details of how we are going to plumb this thing in. Turns out we have a bit of fluffing about to do (always the way). The inlets/outlets on the radiator, inverter and the pipe to the back of the car all have different diameters. Paul is going to make appropriate adapters for the pipe which solves most of the problems. Still leaves us with the inverter to motor connection which we will sort out with an appropriate size change adapter (could change the inlet on the motor or inverter, but I would rather not play around with these, at least until we have fired it all up). To get everything ready for Paul, I removed the aluminum pipes from the car and cut of the ends we don't need. The radiator receives air from the front air intake which is at ankle hight. This air is channeled up through the near horizontal radiator before exiting through the middle of the bonnet (this increases down force and reduces drag.

Now that the heavy engineering is finished in the cabin, I set about tidying up. After vacuuming I installed the POT box and connected the recently fabricated connecting rod (also attaching a return spring to the arm). Everything lined up nicely and the travel is good. It is all mounted above the level of the steering column, so it is well out of the way.

Earlier in the morning we also went and checked out the trailer progress. Everything is looking good. Discussed a few minor details like hook locations. The trailer will have a scissor jack at the front to control the tilt angle. We sourced one of these from a wrecker. Tried to get a common one with some corrosion protection which I think we did a reasonable job of (looks like it is anodised).

Thats all for today.

Day 5

Friday. Today we completed the welding for the motor mounts and the seats (Bruce and I prepared the parts and Paul did the welding).

Also, we began fitting out the accelerator POT with appropriate attachments to connect it to the accelerator pedal (required the creation of an arm and a bracket to fit in the Saker's pedal box). We plan on using a rod and a couple of ball joints to connect the accelerator pedal to the POT arm. As well as the internal POT spring we will add a spring to the POT's arm to prevent it staying open if something goes wrong.

Earlier this morning I had a quick look at the on board computer to prepare for the wiring. I have come to the conclusion that this will be very easy to get going. I'm looking forward to when the internal wiring can begin as this starts to make it feel real. We still need to create the fittings to hold the inverter, contactor box and the batteries. When this messy work is complete, then we will start the wiring. Hopefully the wiring will start on Monday at the latest.

Before I go, if you haven't noticed yet, the greenstage website has been updated and it is no longer just a stub. It shows our imediate high level goals and ways in which you can become involved. Check it out: http://www.greenstage.co.nz

Enjoy.

Day 4

Another day at the office. Today didn't feel very productive, but we organised a few things and made some decisions along the way.

Firstly, we have arranged to install bucket seats and have them upholstered as well. We removed the original European spec seating (which really is just a shaped floor pan). It is not very supportive and doesn't look very nice either. The NZ designed bucket seats are going to much nicer, they provide more support and make a bit more room in the cockpit.

Changing the mount points for the motor has been slow going, but we are making progress. We have been trying not to compromise the space between the end of the motor and the rear firewall (because this space is going to house a section of the battery pack). We needed a small redesign of the brackets which prevent motor rotation around the axles. The original design was encroaching a little too much on our battery space. This is sorted now and we will hopefully finish the welding tomorrow.

Finally, we have decided to retain the original front mounted radiator design. We do have the option of using a small radiator in the side pod air intakes which would save a bit of weight, but we are not going to do this at the moment. In theory the small radiator should be more than enough, but we don't really know if extra cooling is going to be significantly beneficial for our ability to run at full power for long periods of time. Hence we are making use of existing plumbing for a front mounted radiator. We will be starting with a medium sized radiator, knowing that we can go bigger or smaller without any hassle. This is a nice position to be in as we start to test out the capabilities of the car. We will be recording water and motor temperatures with the on board computer so we will be able to monitor the behaviour of various setups and make decisions from there.

Stay tuned.

Day 3

Today was a little strange. No particular reason, it just feels a little surreal. Working on a car this amazing has something to do with it. Combine that with the high power electric drive train and I think you will understand the feeling.
I have placed an order with Brent Smith Trailers to build a Saker specific transporter trailer by the 12th September. Brent has confirmed this will be achieved and he was happy to accomodate the modifications required to make the trailer just right for the job (this saves alot of hassel with renting or organising transporters plus it solves the problem of eventually having to buy a trailer anyway).

Today Bruce sourced the STi axels and prepared the chassis changes for Paul to weld later in the day. The chassis and mount point changes are now complete from a design point of view and largely complete from a fabrication point of view. We need to remove the motor and transaxle tomorrow so Paul can finish the job.

The eVision is now installed in the dash and we also have some tail lights (will get a third LED light to fill out the space later). We don't need blinkers or reversing lights for a race car (although as you can see we have installed blinkers). We only need brake and rain lights to pass scrutineering. This gives us a few interesting styling options which I might experiment with if we have time.

Until fabrication is complete and the mount points for the controller, contactor box and batteries are complete the focus needs to remain on auxiliary systems and other similar jobs that don't require access to the cockpit.

Tomorrow mount point fabrication will continue as well as auxilary system wiring, dash switches and buttons etc. We might also start looking at the POT box for the accelerator.

More action to come...

Road to completion

Last week our motor, controller, eVision and chargers arrived. Kept us busy unpacking things and checking we had what we expected. The event also provided a bit of an unpacking frenzy for the documentary being created.

Some of these parts had been ordered back in January, so we have been waiting a while. Now that we have the key components, it puts the time line and road to completion squarely back in our hands. We are behind where we wanted to be, but I am not going to rush anything.

We have also been tidying up the lead acid test pack. I am pleased to say, it is ready and waiting for the challenge of testing the Electric Saker's mechanical and electrical systems when they are completed in the next 3-4 weeks.

Delivery

Back in September 2007 I committed to a project that would make a difference and be noticed by people that might not normally take note of environmental issues. The project takes the form an an electric race car designed to compete with purpose built petrol powered cars. The starting point for the project is the Saker GT which is a successful space frame chassis car designed in NZ and raced all over the world. Our car is known as the Electric Saker.

EV technology is at a stage now, that if you are willing to spend the money, it is realistic to create a car that will out perform most petrol powered cars. The costs are still high, but they are now comparable to what some people have spent on their conventional race cars.

On Saturday I received confirmation of the delivery dates for our Electric Saker's motor and controller. Everything going to plan, the delivery is expected to arrive at our workshop on 31st July (one month exactly). We eagerly await this as it sets in motion the rest of our project schedule. This schedule and many other things are documented on our project wiki. Please have a look around. Although this wiki is largely intended for the project team, we encourage others to become involved. If you have relevant information and feel so inclined, we are happy for you to contribute directly to the wiki.

Enjoy the ride.

Why?

Welcome to the Greenstage New Zealand blog.

Why am I blogging and why does greenstage.co.nz exist?

I have always been environmentally aware, I admire quality engineering including performance vehicles and I have a strong social conscience. Greenstage's purpose is to combine these three things (environment, quality engineering solutions and social good) into a profitable commercial venture that enlightens people to new possibilities, creates demand and pushes my buttons at the same time (I believe you need to love what you do).

To cut to the chase, Greenstage is about living a no compromises life style that is good for the planet. This blog will document Greenstage's progress.

I hope you enjoy the ride.