AURAK Solar Tent

Due to the increase of using the tents in United Arab Emirates for different purposes, people started to consume a lot of power to cool down the ambient temperature of the tent with inefficient air conditioners. The improvement in the efficiency of the Flexible solar panels reached a higher efficiency equals to 17%. There were many applications to use solar energy with the tents, but none of them reached the power level of cooling. In Fact, NASA was working on many researches to make solar tent. NASA was planning to make a thin-film photovoltaic to provide electrical power during the mission to Mars since 1991. The below Figure is showing the design of the solar tent. The purpose of this tent was not for living or sheltering, it was only to generate electricity with a Thin-film arrangement design of tent.

Camping, gathering and wedding, all are different activities which are mostly done using tents in the United Arab Emirates. The tent was related to their culture for years ago and still used in its classical design. Due to its low cost, people prefer it over renting a hall. Even though, a high power consumption is used to cool down the tent in the hot environment of the gulf region. The tent material (PVC) is decreasing the temperature but not very efficient. The PVC is having a U-value is 4 times higher than the concrete walls of common buildings. With these conditions, it is quite a challenge to cool the temperature down. Using the solar energy, the cooling power consumption can be reduced but it requires a lot of panels to make it zero energy consumption. However, the area is limited by the tent where the panels should be fixed.

In RAK Research and Innovation Center, we want to renovate the solar tent and improve the project with the new efficient flexible solar module technology and cool the air temperature using a low power AC which will be challenging to accomplish.