Maynooth University students Emily Harpur (Business), Andrew Lee Mitchell (Engineering), Liam Glennon (Engineering) and Ahrl Shaun Recto (Engineering) won the Best Commercial Solution Award at ESB Inter-Colleges Challenge 2021.
With mentors from the Department of Engineering and the School of Business, the team of 4 students represented Maynooth over two days of strong competition between Universities from across Ireland.
The competition tasked teams to set out an energy storage solution to help Ireland achieve net-zero carbon emissions. The challenge this year also specified the solution must be first targeted for the town of Athlone and teams were restricted from using batteries or Hydrogen as their energy storage solution. All teams presented themselves extremely well, proposing solutions ranging from compressed air, flywheel technologies and carbon neutral methods for methane generation and storage.
In-line with Covid-19 protocols the competition was held remotely and teams had to collaborate remotely for approximately 9 hours on the first day, and present their solution to a judging panel of experienced Engineers and Business professionals on the second day, facing in-depth questions on the technical and commercial merits of their proposal.
The overall winners of the event were DCU. They received the prestigious McLoughlin perpetual trophy and will represent Ireland in Montreal, Canada for the international case competition, ENGCOMM 2022, from February 22 to 26 2022
