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Week 6 (July 10-14)

We continued to install wayside power rails for the other half of the track.  However, we were unable to finish the installation because we realized that there were some errors when measuring the small rectangular copper pieces that serve as the rail connectors at the joints.  As a result, many of the holes on the pieces had to be redrilled and new pieces had to be cut.  48V need to be provided to the wayside power rails.  We have not yet heard back from the manufacturer of the 48V LiFeO4 GMET TS116 batteries about why they are not outputting 48V.  A few weeks ago, we charged up both batteries using three SoloPower SFX1-I70 solar panels connected to an Anada PV60 charge controller.  We also charged it up using the IP53 48V-30A charger connected to an outlet.  Regardless of how the batteries were charged, we were unable to get an output of 48V.


Figure 1:  48V LiFeO4 GMET TS116 batteries. (Photo by Andrew Lu)

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