DiGi-Deep Green Challenge

Recently, DiGi organizes a go green competition and came to UNITEN. The price for the 1st place is RM70,000! Our renewable energy class is selected to take part (because it is the most relevant course regarding to the competition) to save our environment by trying to reduce the energy usage of the air conditioning system in the Radio Based Station (RBS). Reduce in energy usage will therefore reduce the CO2 emission to the environment (Sustainability). Two 2.5hp air conditioners are running 24/7 alternatively. The average energy bill for the air conditioning system is RM400/month. Our challenge is to design a technical model that minimizes the energy consumption and at the same time the Return on Investment (ROI) has to be more than 50% and payback less than 2 years.

A team of 8 consists of Jason Lee, Kok Wei, Chun Hong, Yik Hong, Kiang Wei, Zhi Xing, Wai Yan and me. Jason Lee is indeed a report designer. The first time he proposed the report format and the team role (I am surprise!!), I can let him do the rest without any worry.

Chun Hong is good in drawing the schematic diagrams of the ideas. (I want to show but the idea is confidential until 1st of September. Maybe next time?) Kok wei, without you, we won’t go till so far. Last but not least, thank you Kiang Wei and Zhi Xing for the information searching and Challenge 2.

The difficulty of this competition is the low energy bill of the air conditioning. It is very hard to save $$ from the RM400 because we have to take care of the payback (engineering devices are costly). Nothing much can be done! Initially, we proposed three options which are the close loop water cooling system, heat recovery adsorption chiller, and solar thermal adsorption chiller. We are lucky to be selected for our proposal. Millions thank you to our advisor Associate Professor Ir. Dr. Erie Sandhita for voicing out our ideas and support us in the meeting of proposal selection.

Being selected --> have more sleepless night. Our team has to stay up until 4am for three days to refine the proposal in order to compete with the other universities. Now, we are doing inverter technology and our proposal is 97% done! Thank you brothers for all the effort that you all put in. Good luck and all the best to our team! (RM70000 divided by 8 = RM8750 per person $.$) hehe.