Solfocus

I had the oppurtunity to work at Solfocus three times, during the summers of 2008 and 2009, as well as the 2010-2011 school year. Solfocus's unique CPV technology was invented by Gary Conley and Mike Horne, who built their first module and started their company at the legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where such breakthroughs as the Xerox machine and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) were developed. As a startup in the fast-growing cleantech sector, Solfocus was an exciting, fast-paced environment where I got my initial exposure to professional engineering from legendary Product Development Engineers like Pete Young and Stephen Senatore.

My first summer at Solfocus, the company was working with Spanish solar tracker company Inspira, and I worked on an automated solar panel cleaning project which influenced their solar tracker design, in addition to our module design, and maitenance procedures. The following summer, I focused more on the two-axis solar tracker, as Solfocus had recently bought Inspira, and was better integrating the tracker into their module design. After a summer at REFU Solar Electronics, I decided to come back to work in a position with more responsibility from 2010-2011. I was involved in a complete redesign of the solar tracker, which involved significant saving, better reliability, and tighter integration with the entire system, which was now selling around the world. I learned a lot about Design to Cost, working with suppliers in China, and developed skills in Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing as well as Finite Element Analysis.