Adapting Capstone Design for the Solar District Cup Competition

The US Department of Energy Solar District Cup is a nationwide solar design competition for engineering students. This article describes one faculty member's experience integrating the competition into a capstone design course for the first time. Some key challenges were adapting the course assignment structure to match the overall proposal report requirements and taking advantage of the competition timeline regarding how to best structure the course instructional time. Besides developing students' experience with solar design, some advantages of the competition were the availability of access to professional design tools, support from the competition in the form of training materials and office hours with professionals, and the overall breadth of design aspects that students were expected to consider. In addition, the inclusion of distributional energy equity as a component of the proposal presents a strong opportunity for instruction and assessment related to ABET Student Outcomes. The Solar District Cup was a positive design experience for students and the lessons learned as described in this paper may help aid others integrate it into capstone design courses.