- Abstract: One negative aspect of living in northern countries is dealing with harsh winters and heavy snowfall. This requires a fair amount of time in shoveling and maintaining a person's driveway. However, depending on the snowfall, the task can be difficult to remove due to accumulation, constant snowfall, or finding the time to do so. Snow on the driveway may also be a danger due to weather hazards that are caused by the winter season. Current solutions to deal with the snow filled driveways are to manually shovel the driveway, or hiring a company to do so. But this can be costly, laborious, time consuming, and could cause strain on health. Another possible solution is to install a heated driveway system. This requires the installation of heated cables either under or on top of the driveway that can be activated accordingly to melt the snow. This solution is great as it eliminates labour, does not require time, nor will it put a strain on health. One downfall is the efficiency of this system as well as the energy costs associated with it. Smart Systems' project is to update and improve upon current heating driveway systems to increase energy savings, by implementing an efficient and intelligent system. This is achieved by powering the entire system using solar energy as well as rechargeable batteries, which obtain their power from solar panels. A programmable microcontroller will be used that will record data, schedule tasks, and activate the heaters on the driveway when necessary. The use of specific sensors will allow the system to interact with its environment, to determine whether snow needs to be melted or not. And finally the driveway will be planned in a grid like formation to only melt in areas on the driveway that require the melting of snow. This system, as mentioned, will be running simultaneously so as to melt the snow on your driveway as well as being sustainable and cost effective.
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- Resources:
- Faculty advisor(s): Shawki Areibi
- Students: Ammar Abu Leil, Joshua Gibbs and Nicholar Pollard
This page is maintained by Shawki Areibi, sareibi@uoguelph.ca
Last modified Feb. 2013