Providing Solar Power to the Panama Rain Forest: A Senior Design Project

For the past few years six different senior design teams designed a solar power system for the Embera people that live in the rainforest outside Panama City, Panama. The project required a group of Civil, Electrical and Mechanical engineering students over a period of 3 semesters to collect the data for the design and complete the design. Finally, a group of Mechanical and Construction engineering students completed the design and installed the equipment. The paper will discuss the design process and detail each of the senior design projects. The entire project included trips to collect the data and meet the tribe, detailed design of the components, finding funding for the project, scheduling of the construction and getting the supplies to the site. Each step required a different type of engineering solution with a different student outcome.