Development of online sustainable energy experiments using EMONA HELEx on ilab shared architecture with switching capability

laboratory is important in Engineering and Science as students get chances to practice what they have learned in classes. However, there is no laboratory component for students undertaking courses in sustainable energy at University of Dar es Salaam. Introduction of these labs is expensive as new apparatus should be bought; building for lab should as well be available and staff to manage the labs. Another problem is number of experimental setups that can be available online at a time. Sustainable energy experiments were developed on EMONA HELEx kit, switching mechanism was incorporated on the kit since it is designed to do one experiment at a time. The DIO lines on the Universal base board of the EMONA HELEx kit together with the digital writer on the ELVIS II+, allowed more than one experiment to be wired at a time. The user interface was designed in such a way that experimenter could select an experiment to perform with the input and output tabs as well. Results for solar cell experiments showed that maximum power of the cell was at the knee of the I-V curve. Electrolyzer experiment showed that current increased exponentially with increase in voltage. Hydrogen fuel cell experiment, three regions on the V-I curve were observed, the activation region, the Ohmic region and mass transport region. To conclude the online sustainable energy labs are necessary especially with the current situation where energy is limited. Recommendation for this research is, other sets of experiments should be integrated on iLabs in order to be available online.