Will electric cars revolutionise the life in Polish municipalities by 2030? If so, then how? How will they affect our behaviour, the environment and power systems? Those questions were asked of students of electrical and power engineering upper secondary schools in the national competition “Energy of the Young”, organised by Energa SA with the Olivia Business Centre as a partner. The authors of the most interesting ideas and their schools will be offered attractive prizes.

“Energy of the Young” is the sixth edition of the national competition (it was earlier organised as “ENERGY of the Future”). This time the organiser – Energa SA – invites students to tackle the subject “E-mobility in your municipality. Vision by 2030”. Works for the competition may be submitted by 15 March 2017 via energiamlodych.pl.

The competition is open to teams composed of three students and one teacher. Each school may enrol any number of teams as long as one teacher supervises only one team.

“We are convinced that a direct reference of the subject of the competition to the place to which the young people are tied with their families (or where they attend school) and treat like their little motherlands, will make them use the knowledge learned at school for creative work and to learn more. In last year’s edition, we saw that students presented ideas relating directly to the buildings in which they study. Involvement in work on a competition project is an excellent opportunity to use creativeness and develop the teamwork skills – which are features highly appreciated in the labour market”, says Michał Lemański, Director of the Marketing Department at Energa SA.

Authors of five highest rated projects will be invited to a final contest to be held on 21 April 2017 in Gdańsk. The finalists will present their ideas and will have to answer questions asked by the jury and other competing teams. The jury will assess the content and the form of the presentations. The best three teams and their teachers will receive non-cash prizes while the schools they represent will receive cash prizes. The regulations of the competition are available on the website.

Prizes for the finalists of the competition “Energy of the Young”:

• first place – a laptop for each team member and teacher and the amount of PLN 12 000 for scientific props for the students of the school represented by the winning team
• second place – tablets and the amount of PLN 8 000 respectively
• third place – smartphones and the amount of PLN 5 000.

The jury will also award a special Professor Małgorzata Milewska-Stawiany prize for the utmost care for linguistic correctness of the project and the presentation. Those will be e-book readers.

The competition has one more attraction. Apart from five teams to be qualified to the finals, another group of five teams will be nominated – authors of highly assessed works not qualified to the finals.

“We will invite those teams to attend the finals as the audience and also to an educational trip to a hydroelectric power station and to a wind farm. We are of the opinion that gaining knowledge via experience is very valuable – it helps us understand better and memorise the content found in textbooks. The trip will be an excellent opportunity to have a close look at the most modern technologies used in power industry”, says Rafał Hyrzyński, Director of the Strategy and Strategic Asset Management Department of Energa SA.

The competition “Energy of the Young” is one of the initiatives pursued by the Energa Group within its program “ENERGA Education” with the core aim being to popularise knowledge on electrical energy and to develop pro-ecological attitudes.