UTAR Students Secure Second Place In Second "Green" Challenge

Two Engineering students from the Faculty of Engineering and Science of UTAR teamed up and called themselves AvantGarde to participate in the first Schneider Electric University Challenge last year.

They made it to the finals and were told that they were a whisker away from securing a prize for their efforts.

Their failure to win a prize at the competition did not stop them from trying again. Instead, the experience and knowledge they gained from their participation fuelled them to make another attempt at winning a prize at the annual competition.

For this year's competition, they recruited another member to the team but called themselves Eco-University in line with the theme "Green My World@ My Campus" of the competition.

Mak Kwan Wuey (Team Leader), Liu Chee Wei and Gan Yu Han of Eco-University team from UTAR received their rewards on 22 September 2010 at the finals of the competition held at a resort hotel in Subang Jaya.

In the Schneider Electric University Challenge 2010, Eco-University came in second just behind the UM Team from University of Malaya (UM) but stayed ahead of the Green-tech team, also from UM, to take home RM10,000, trophies and a certificate of honour each for their of submission and presentation of a technical proposal and a prototype of a comprehensive energy-saving system built with Schneider Electric's energy efficient products and solutions for smart lighting, heating, ventilating, air conditioning and heat extraction.

Some 55 teams from 13 local universities took part in this year's competition. The ten finalists for the competition included teams from International Islamic University Malaysia, Inti International University, UCSI University (two teams), and Universiti Sains Malaysia (three teams).

Sharing his views on his team's participation of the competition, Mak, who led Avant Garde last year and Eco-University this year, said, "In any competition even though we didn't win it doesn't mean that we go home empty handed; in fact, we have learnt a lot of things regarding their products and how it operates, which encourages us to try again this year. Without the experience from last year, we could not have won this year's competition."

Liu, who was also with Mak in AvantGarde, added, "And through the experience and knowledge we had gained last year, we went for the second attempt and with full confidence hoping that we will win."

Gan joined the competition with another UTAR team last year but his team failed to make it to the finals. He participated again for the opportunity to gain more knowledge and experience. On his second attempt, Gan said, "True enough, what I have learned and gained from this competition has been a priceless experience."

When asked what would happen to the prize-winning prototype of Eco-University, Mak said, "We will improve it by adding last year equipment to make it more complete. It will be exhibited in the digital electronics laboratory as a demo unit for any FES Utarians to learn more about this competition and hopefully, it could inspire more students to join this competition next year . "

Schneider University Challenge 2010 is the second annual competition organised by Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management. The competition is aimed at creating awareness of energy efficient solutions and sustainable practices among students and it is open to engineering undergraduates from public and private universities in Malaysia .