The Okuapeman Senior High School’s Automated Winnowing Machine emerged as the winner for the Eastern Regional Energy Commissions’ Senior High Schools Renewable Energy Challenge with 66.5 percent score out of ten schools that participated in the Region.
Aburi Girls Senior High School’s Geo Care on the other hand was adjudged the second with 66 percent while Fodua Day Community Senior High Technical School’s Fosec Solar Powdered Sprayer with 63 point three percent won the third position.
The rest of the schools were presented with certificates and souvenirs for participating in the competition. The competition which is the fourth in edition was held in Koforidua in collaboration with the Energy Commission and the Ghana Education Service. It was aimed at tasking second cycle institutions offering Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, STEM, Courses, with projects in the area of agriculture ranging from land preparation, production, harvesting, processing, and storage where renewable energy technologies can be utilized.
The competing schools were to come up with projects on how renewable energy technologies can be used to improve any of the aspects involved in agriculture. The ten competing schools were Pope John Senior High School and Minor Seminary, Methodist Girls SHS, St. Roses SHS, Kwahu Ridge Senior High Technical School and New Juaben Senior High Commercial School. The rest were Fodua Day Community Senior High Technical School, Suhum Senior High Technical School, Okuapeman SHSl, Aburi Girls SHS and Oyoko Methodist SHS. They presented projects focused on individuals or businesses in small-scale agriculture such as Locally Made Solar Dryer, Wind Power Irrigation System and Smart Irrigation among others which were marked by judges who are experts in the STEM field.
The winning school, Okuapeman SHS who were presented with a trophy and a cash prize of 800 Ghana cedis will proceed to the next stage of the competition to represent the region at the zonal level. The Deputy Director of Renewable Energy, Frederick Ken Appiah, in his address observed that the competition is a platform to foster renewable energy focus, research and development among students.
This, he noted, will go a long way to facilitate mentorship that will practicalize their ideas into commercially viable solutions in the country. The National Project Coordinator of the fourth Renewable Energy Challenge, Julius Nkansah-Nyarko in an interview with GBC NEWS after the competition was generally impressed and is hopeful that these competitions organized will help eliminate chew and poor method of learning among students.
A contestant of the winning school, Nicole Eyram Dogbey expressed her excitement to the news team and promised to improve on their project for the next stage of the competition. The competition was themed, “Mechanised Small-Scale Agriculture using Renewable Energy Technologies”.
