Ohio State is known for many things, including its efforts to become eco-friendly with “green” buildings and its community outreach programs.

OSU students from across multiple disciplines are teaming up to give the kids at Camp Mary Orton some brand-new toys: solar-powered cars.

OSU students Chase Leibold, Boram Choy, Dave Barna, Chris Seeley and Michael Williams have been working since January to build, design and install three solar-powered golf carts and their solar panels at Camp Mary Orton, a retreat minutes from downtown Columbus. Funded by a grant from Ford Motor Co., the eight-passenger golf carts are going to be used as a lower-cost alternative to transport children and elderly visitors across the camp.

Leibold, a fourth-year in electrical engineering, said the project began as a interdisciplinary senior design project under the guidance of Bob Rhoads in the Mechanical Engineering department. The project was not able to be completed during the school year, so Leibold found a work-study job at the Center for Automotive Research under Frank Ohlemacher to finish up the project.

“As it stands now, I’ve designed and installed, a five-panel, grid-tied solar panel installation at the Camp,” Leibold said. “We’ve also modified a building at the Camp to house the electric vehicles.”
Seeley, a fourth-year in electrical engineering, was also involved.

“My main duty was functioning as team leader,” Seeley said. “I also researched the companies we had to deal with, picked out the products we had to use, and interacted with the power company to make sure we followed their regulations.”

Camp Mary Orton, a local non-profit community center with Head Start and other programs, is run by the Godman Guild. While the original intent of the solar panel project was to be able transport kids to and from programs at the Godman Guild, the cars could not be made street legal due to liability issues. It was then decided that the cars would be given to the camp to be used with its retreats and summer programs.

The panels installed at the camp are intended to offset the cost of charging the Neighborhood Electric Vehicles.

“It’s not really designed to eliminate your electric bill; it’s designed to take a chunk out of it,” said Leibold. While the cars are expensive — Leibold said that the cars run to $10,000 per car, and the panels anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000 — they provide clean, quiet energy with no emissions.

“Though these cars aren’t street legal, the idea of using solar panels could easily translate to every day life,” Leibold said. “It’s expensive, yet dependable. I think if we could take 15 to 20 percent of our usage and put panels on people’s houses, basically, you could make two to three gallons of gas every day. If I got 60 miles a day for free … that’d be great.”

Seeley said he believes solar-powered cars are not the future.

“We are reaching some of the limitations of solar cells and even the most powerful solar cell can only move extremely light-weight vehicles,” Seeley said. “These extremely light-weight vehicles will never meet the demands that people have for everyday use. I do believe that electric cars will become more popular in the next seven years. Whether or not they are charged by solar power is up to the consumer.”

Seeley and Leibold both agree that the biggest benefit of the project was its positive impact on the community.

“I went to day camp there as a kid at Camp Mary Orton, so it’s nice to be helping out and giving back,” Leibold said. “I think its hard to come by these opportunities with engineering, to do community based work. The other projects were military or industry based … I feel like I’ve been doing something big in college. I feel like this kind of culminates my college experience, doing this.”

Leibold also said that he would like to stay on the “greener” side of electrical engineering.

“Maybe not necessarily installing solar panels,” Leibold said, “but being somewhere in the industry, rather than making bombs. It’s a great way to help people. And I think it’s definitely coming down the road. I [also] think there’s a really big future with solar panels; I think eventually there will be solar panels on every roof. I think the incentive needs to be there. I kind of compare myself to a surfer waiting to catch the next wave … the next wave is solar power.”