EESTEC Olympics hekaton

The EESTEC Association and the laboratories of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering will organise a one-day EESTEC Olympics competition on Wednesday 19 April.

In this competition, teams will solve three solar energy challenges developed by the Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics Laboratory, the Power Grids and Devices Laboratory and the Energy Strategies Laboratory.

Photovoltaics (PV) is the fastest growing renewable energy technology in the last decade and has already achieved the status of the cheapest electricity generation source. The price of PV is steadily decreasing with economies of scale, making it affordable for all people and, with rising electricity prices, it is also a good investment opportunity for private individuals and businesses.

Despite these leaps forward, scientists and engineers still have challenges to overcome to make the technology even more accessible and competitive. Thus, PV research and development is moving towards cheaper technologies, increased energy conversion efficiency, lifetime, energy yield and energy payback period. As a consequence, new ways of locating PV in space are being introduced, such as integration in buildings, vehicles, infrastructure (roads, fences), urban areas, agrovoltaics and floating PV.

Challenges for this year's competition:

• 1. LPVO (Laboratory of Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics)
  • Determine the state of the art of PV technologies and systems by proposing technological solutions to make PV more cost and energy competitive.
  • Developing strategies to fit as many PV as possible into a given space in the most innovative, yet technically feasible and cost-effective way.
    
• 2. LEON (Laboratory of Electricity Networks and Devices)
  • Propose a strategy to enable distribution networks to connect more renewable electricity sources without interfering with the existing grid.
• 3. LEST (Laboratory for Energy Policy)
  • Develop the idea of creating a sustainable energy community in your environment.