Solar Project Gives Bike Team Its Moment in the Sun

With patience, ingenuity and a lot of duct tape, four South El Monte High School students built and raced a solar-powered bicycle that beat 23 other sun-worshiping schools in a national bike race, their teacher said.

Three of the students transformed an ordinary race bike into a math/science project that took first place in the high school division and third in an all-ages competition at last month’s Solar Bikerace USA, in Neosho, Mo.

Next month, if the team can collect enough sponsorship money, they hope to spruce up their bike and take it to a similar race in Japan, said math teacher and avid cyclist Javier Solorzano, who learned about the Missouri race through one of his bicycling magazines.

The purpose of the race is to encourage students to integrate math, science, physical education and--after months of soliciting sponsorships--business, Solorzano said. The students were allowed to use store-bought materials, but they had to figure out how to put those materials together themselves.

Before getting to work on the project in December, the novice technicians had little or no idea how to hook up a motor to a bicycle, let alone how to build the solar panels that charge the motor’s battery. But with a little help from Cal State L.A., which provided the team with equipment, guidance and laboratory space, Solorzano’s math students quickly figured it out, said Nick Granado, 16, the youngest member of the team.

AeroVironment donated the motor that sits atop the bike’s back wheel and helps riders maintain speed, and the Baldwin Park Police Department--which uses identical motors on their patrol bikes--gave the students a lesson in how the gadget works.

The motor is powered by two batteries that are charged by a large 64-panel board placed over the bike’s back wheel. The board, of course, gets its power from the sun. But as of yet, technology can harness only so much power from the sun.

“You can’t get something for nothing,” Granado said. “I mean, it uses the sun’s energy, but you’ll never get a lot of energy out of it.”

Speaking with the authority of someone who has a new obsession, Granado explains that the solar power will only generate enough energy to keep the bike going for less than two non-daylight hours.

Charging the batteries through the solar panels takes more than four hours, and plugging the batteries into an outlet is only slightly less time-consuming. After the first team completed half of the 62-mile race, all teams were required to stop for two hours and get as much sun as they could before completing the course, Solorzano said.

During the race, cyclists made Indy-like pit stops to make minor repairs and switch riders. South El Monte Eagles football defensive guard Guillermo Rios, 17, peddled short distances, providing the power that put the team in the lead. But track runner Eric Vuilliomenet “had the endurance, man,” Granado said. “And he kept the pace.”

Granado and Luan Luong, 17, served as the pit crew, doing whatever they could think of to keep the bike in shape.

“See that piece of gum?” Granado asked, pointing to a blue sticky wad squished between the bottom of the solar panel board and the aluminum braces that attach the board to the bike. “I wanted to make sure the board stayed on there.”