Growing Table
Team Members: Pek Yong, Elena, Xaiver Tan and Yu Quan
Background:
Food security is an important aspect in Singapore’s “30 by 30” goal to sustainably produce 30% of the nation’s nutritional needs. One of the ways to achieve this is to support food
agriculture in Singapore households. Encouraging Singaporean Citizens to grow albeit, a tiny amount of food, in their own household, can cause a ripple effect which can lead to a
substantial amount in reducing the strain on Singapore reliance of food importation. However, one caveat is that plants take a relatively long time to bear fruit.
Problem Statement:
How might we design an off-grid plant growing system to promote growth of plant by lengthening the amount of time for the plant to undergo photosynthesis?
Our Solution:
Our team have integrated solar panels, a battery system and LED growth light onto a small table. The solar panel will charge the battery during the day, and the growth light
will switch on when the illumination is below a certain level. It is estimated to provide around 4 additional hours of photosynthesis time to promote growth, before letting the plant
"rest" for the rest of the night.
Future Improvements:
Here are the following improvements we hope to make:
- To improve the effiency, we going to integrate a voltage bulk converter to step the 12V from solar panel to 5V, which is the voltage rating of the growth light.
- Change the battery from lead-acid to lithum-based battery, as it have a higher specific energy.
- Increase the capacity of the battery to cater a higher day of autonomy
- Increase solar panel wattage to cater to months of low sunlight
- Integrate auto watering system to make it more convinent
Skills Involved: Electrical (Circuits, Battery and Solar Panel sizing)
Photos/Videos:
