Dubai, Business News: Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has announced that the second Solar Decathlon Middle East (SDME) has started welcoming visitors to the SDME Village at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. The SDME Village is open to the public 11-25 November 2021. SDME encourages the participating university teams to design, build, and operate smart and sustainable models of cost-effective and energy efficient solar-powered homes, focusing on protecting the environment, and considering the climatic conditions of the region.
The SDME competition is being held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, as part of a partnership between DEWA, Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, and US Department of Energy. This year, the competition has attracted eight teams from 12 universities. To host the second SDME, the largest and most competitive competition for universities worldwide, DEWA has allocated over 60,000 square metres at the Solar Park. Organising the competition at the solar park, the largest single-site solar power project in the world, will enable students and guests to visit DEWA’s Research and Development (R&D) Centre and Innovation Centre and learn about the smart and sustainable houses.
“Through the SDME, DEWA works to engage young people in sustainable development and encourages them to innovate and unleash their creativity to support global efforts to mitigate climate change. The second SDME is of particular importance; especially since it is being organised in conjunction with Expo 2020 Dubai, held under the theme’ Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’. Thus, the objectives of the SDME align with the theme and main pillars of Expo 2020: Sustainability, Mobility, and Opportunities. The DEWA pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai is also displaying models of the smart houses from this year’s SDME, next to the winning entry from the 2018 SDME organised for the first in the MENA region by DEWA in 2018,” said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.
The list of teams participating in the second SDME includes Team KU of Khalifa University; Team Sharjah of the University of Sharjah; Team Desert Phoenix of the University of Louisville, Higher Colleges of Technology, American University in Dubai, and American University in Sharjah; Team HARMONY of The British University in Dubai; Team ESTEEM of Heriot-Watt University, and Heriot-Watt University, Dubai; Team TAWAZUN of Manipal Academy of Higher Education Dubai Campus; Team Go Smart of the University of Bahrain; and Team SCUTxCCSIC of the South China University of Technology. The participating teams compete in 10 contests: architecture; engineering and building; energy management; energy efficiency; comfort conditions; house functioning; sustainable transport; sustainability; communications, and innovation. For more information on the competition, please visit www.solardecathlonme.com.
