Solar Team Eindhoven: Stella Juva – The World’s First Solar-Powered Ambulance

Project overview

This year, Solar Team Eindhoven, a team of 23 students from the Eindhoven University of technologies is building Stella Juva: the world’s first solar-powered ambulance.

By relying purely on the power of the sun, Stella Juva can both drive as well as power its medical equipment entirely independent of the energy grid. This enables Stella Juva to provide medical care anywhere in the world, even in remote and hard-to-reach areas.

In August 2026, the solar ambulance will be used by the team, visiting multiple field locations of local NGOs to show how Stella Juva can use, charge, and safely support patient care with medical equipment. The team aims to demonstrate that sustainable healthcare is accessible in locations that are normally hard to reach for conventional emergency services.

The challenge

Building this car from the ground up proves to be challenging. Combining the requirements of having a vehicle that is able to drive long distances, as well as power its medical equipment, efficient use needs to be made from the solar panels on Stella Juva’s roof. A completely new electrical system had to be designed, including five in-house designed PCBs that are manufactured, including assembly by Eurocircuits.

MPPT’s

A key PCB in this system is the MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracker), which converts the solar panel output to match the 400V battery level. It operates by continuously adjusting the effective impedance seen by the panels, ensuring they function at their maximum efficiency point.

This leads to a highly complex PCB design, featuring 2500V isolation and high-frequency switching power nets reaching up to 500kHz. Developing and iterating on such a design within a tight timeframe would not have been feasible without Eurocircuits’ rapid prototyping services and online manufacturability analysis tools. Additional features, such as automated layout checks for footprints and component spacing, helped catch design errors early, further reducing development time. Eurocircuits played a key role in this project and it would not have been possible without them.

For more information please visit the Solar Team Eindehoven website.