ABU DHABI // Twenty-two universities from around the world - including seven from the UAE - are to compete in Solar Decathlon Middle East, which will see teams build energy-efficient homes with prizes worth Dh10 million at stake.
Announced during the opening ceremony of the World Green Economy Summit in Dubai on Wednesday, the competition will take place in the UAE in 2018 and again in 2020, to coincide with Expo 2020.
Mohammed Mazroui, from the Petroleum Institute, is a student who plans to take part. He said that the competition will spur on technological innovation.
“You learn a lot about how the engineering works on solar energy but to get a chance to see how it could change the world is really why we are studying this in the first place,” he said.
The solar decathlon will see the students compete in 10 categories for the cash prizes. The categories include architecture, engineering, energy management and comfort.
Event director Richard King, who worked at the US Department of Energy before, said that although solar energy was one of the key projects of his life, it is the applicability of the growing technology that needs focus.
“We believe that converting sunlight into electricity is the greatest invention in the 20th century but that won’t come true unless people use it, and I learnt that two heads are better than one,” he said.
By combining engineering and architecture, Mr King said, the applicability of solar energy would be “the best way to power our lives”.
More details on the competition and information on the projects the universities will be working on will be revealed later this year.
nalwasmi@thenational.ae
