About the role
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Voltic Shipping is a Y Combinator-backed clean energy startup developing solar-powered cargo vessels for global trade routes. Backed by the U.S. Department of Energy and NOAA, our mission is to decarbonise ocean freight. Our engineering team is based in East Boston, MA, and this internship is supported through the MassCEC Clean Energy Internship Program.
Your analytical findings will directly inform Voltic's product roadmap. The hardware build and harbor trial are the means of validating that the model can be trusted across the global latitudes and seasons where Voltic's vessels operate.
THE POSITIONS
We are hiring two interns for Summer 2025, each fully dedicated to one independent engineering project. Both positions share the same qualifications, compensation, and location. Candidates should apply to the track that best matches their interests and background — each project is a complete 12-week scope designed for one person working at full attention.
A) Solar tracking systems for marine applications
Keywords: Embedded controls · photovoltaics · Boston Harbor sea trials
Solar panels on a vessel at sea face a compound challenge: the sun’s position changes with time of day, season, and the vessel’s latitude as it crosses the globe. A fixed panel captures only a fraction of the available irradiance compared to one that actively tracks the sun. This project asks: does solar tracking make commercial sense at ship scale, and if so, what architecture delivers the best energy gain per unit cost and weight?
The intern will build an analytical efficiency model covering the full global latitude range, derive the inter-panel shading constraint that limits useful rotation, and assess whether tracking individual panels or the entire array as a unit is the better approach. They will then build a working single-axis tracker on our prototype pontoon and validate it through sea trials in Boston Harbor — confirming that the measured efficiency gain matches the model’s predictions.
