Which Wire Do You Cut?

Written by Tom Nugent on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Question: Which wire do you cut (disconnect)? The red one? The yellow one? Which?! Time’s running out!

Answer: All of them!

No, it’s not a bomb. It’s last year’s photovoltaic (PV) array. We’re reconfiguring the PV array for this year’s competition, so I’ve been disconnecting all the wires to each rail and then removing the rail from the support structure. The wiring is quite involved and the spacing on the PV rails is, necessarily, quite tight, so disconnecting things without damaging the PV cells was very delicate work. I’m halfway done, and should finish the rest next weekend.