Cameron Behning interned with Tectonicus Constructs, LLC, and made parametric design contributions to a US Department of Energy solar panel project.
What was the focus of your internship?
My work was on a US Department of Energy grant focused on designing a means to span solar panels over canals. I was focusing on designing the computational algorithm that would take in various design conditions (canal location, weather, solar geometry, etc.) and in return it would generate some initial design geometry. Originally, we were just worried about making a function structure. Then we moved to calculating an estimated amount of solar power generated as well as a cost of the structure. Now we are working on methods of optimizing, both the script to run fast, as well as the results to get a design that is as efficient as possible.