Renewable Energy Charging Station

The motivation for this project began as a renewable energy charging station to be built at a local park. Since freshman year the project has changed due to circumstances with stakeholders and we now have built a renewable energy station on the roof of a maintenance building on campus. The energy station uses a hybrid system of wind and solar energy to power lights in the building and charge their power tools and golf cart. The solar panels (10) have a capacity of 1000 W (100 watts per solar panel) and the wind turbine has a capacity of 400 W. The cost for the hybrid system was $1500 plus installation costs puts the total around $2200. We estimated that the system would pay for itself in 3-5 years based off of the current cost of electricity. The system will be used to charge batteries for power tools, along with a battery that powers an electric car.