For the second straight year, a team from De La Salle University-Manila has bagged Schneider Electric’s Go Green in the City country finals. This team then represented the Philippines in the Asia-Pacific regional finals held in the last week of August.
Don Emmanuel Santamaria and Fae Nicole Serrano, Team Green Goldies from DLSU-Manila, won for their e-Hub project.
The team chose to crowdfund in order to strengthen the awareness of renewable energy. E-Hub is an innovative financing mechanism that grants access to greener energy to address the decline in renewable energy investments and the low-level of awareness of it. By creating the E-Hub app, students Serrano and Santamaria allowed ordinary individuals to be involved in creating a smart city through investments or donations, proposals from project developers, and sell and buy products related to green energy.
Team Green Goldies was awarded P100,000 and also received mentorship from Schneider Electric Philippines’ team of experts that prepared them for the Asia Pacific Regional Finals on August 28-29. They competed against respective country winners from Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Last year, the university also earned the opportunity to represent the country in the regional finals. Iliana Benice Tan and Aaron Jules Del Rosario represented the country and finished first runner-up in the regional finals for their “Glass X” project, which “showcases a design that absorbs the heat being received by buildings from the sun. The heat absorbed is then converted into energy that can be used for the buildings’ own cooling systems, making the overall design versatile, extractive and sustainable.”
The E-Hub app also provides “the latest news on renewables, articles, and blogs from users, games, and average prices of various sources of electricity.”
“Go Green in the City is their platform to share their concepts and ideas that can help make a Smart Nation out of the Philippines and other countries by embracing digitization, innovation, and sustainability,” said Alexandre Vermot, country president, Schneider Electric Philippines.
Worldwide, energy management company Schneider Electric has been encouraging the youth to unleash their inner environmentalist with its advocacy “Go Green in the City”, which features innovations by business and engineering students worldwide.
Now on its eighth year, “Go Green in the City” challenges thousands of students to come up with “bold ideas” that can solve one of the four real-life challenges within energy management, or present an original idea for efficient energy management in a city environment.
The advocacy drew about 20,000 students from 3,000 universities in 180 countries last year.
Go Green in the City attracted more than 400 entries from various colleges and universities nationwide. Other finalists include Syd Ian Matthew De Ama (Far Eastern University) and Chelsea Kate Lavilla (University of Sto. Tomas) aka Team Foodies; and Earle Kit Sanchez (MAPUA Institute of Technology) and Kathlyn Mae Yap (De La Salle University) aka Team OffTheGrid.
First runner-up was Team OffTheGrid who presented GG Tap and Power Glass project use to maximize daily water consumption to generate electricity. Second runner-up was Team Foodies who created a project called The Green Cycle, also a mobile application that serves as a two-part solution using logistics and energy generation to address the world’s food waste problem.