Students

This competition offers a unique chance to gain valuable skills, collaborate with peers, and create a positive impact in your community. Don’t miss out on this challenge to shape a brighter future. Good luck!

The Task

Design the energy infrastructure for a community of 2,000 families, each supported by the combined salaries of a nurse and a schoolteacher. Your design must be affordable, reliable, and sustainable, aiming to enhance community lives with clean, safe, and efficient energy access. No “professional” design experience needed!

The Design Challenge

The “Power the Community” design competition challenges student teams worldwide to design a livable community for 2,000 or more families. To succeed in this challenge, teams must take an integrative, cross-disciplinary approach to community infrastructure and housing design, focusing on achieving great living underpinned by affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy supply. 

​The competition is about integrating innovative approaches to energy and energy infrastructure at the community level. The scope includes how the community accesses energy sources, their distribution, and how families use energy in their homes. 

​The competition also requires designing a prototypical residence that exemplifies the community’s energy and sustainability practices in daily living. The residence should be affordable, energy-efficient, sustainable, and meet the local community’s needs.

​Additionally, teams can consider aspects of community planning, such as people transportation, water, and waste management, public spaces, etc.. Still, the primary focus should be energy use and infrastructure during daily living in the planned community.

Team Eligibility

• Teams may form ad hoc and need not be officially sponsored by a university, or their university can sponsor them. 
• Each team should have a team name and indicate their location, such as their university.
• Teams can decide on the number of teammates themselves. 
• Team members may include undergraduate students, graduate students, and persons who are not degree candidates. 
• Teams may draw on the knowledge and advice from any resources they wish. However, faculty and working professionals should not contribute to directly producing results and deliverables.

Submission Guidelines

• The community should be designed for approximately 2000 or more families. 
• A typical family consists of around four people, plus or minus.
• While the community could have a full range of income and assets, the target family should be able to afford housing and living expenses based on two employed adults: one being a nurse in a large hospital and the other a high school teacher. 
• Consider that a typical family may have two young children, plus or minus, who could be of different genders and who will live in the housing unit from birth through high school. 
• All components of the conceptual design must be available for purchase from worldwide sourcing as of the competition submission deadline.
• The community design should consider access to food/groceries, drug, and other retail stores, manufacturing, offices, medical care, social meeting spaces, recreation, places of worship, etc. Such need not be provided within the new community, and if not, the design should consider people and supply chain flow.

Submission Deadline

May 15, 2024. That gives you ample time to brainstorm and refine your solution. The winning team receives a US$10,000 grand prize and the chance to showcase their design to industry experts. The total prize pool is US$31,000, rewarding the best submissions.

The Partners

UC Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The American University in Cairo’s School of Business kickstarted the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program (EIP) in 2010, a pioneering initiative in the MENA region. EIP played a vital role in spotlighting entrepreneurship’s impact on economic development, contributing significantly to Egypt’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. By fostering ideation and innovation, EIP supported startups across various stages, linking them with accelerators, incubators, and investors. In 2015, aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, EIP evolved into the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI). This transformation expanded its focus to include critical themes such as gender, climate, and sustainability. Over time, entrepreneurship and innovation became central concepts for achieving key objectives like financial sustainability, employment, and gender equality. CEI’s evolution demonstrates that fostering entrepreneurship and innovation as a mindset can contribute to community development. Today, CEI stands as a respected brand in the ecosystem, serving as a go-to reference for stakeholders engaging with youth, women, startups, MSMEs, and underserved communities.

African Engineering and Technology Network (Afretec)

The African Engineering and Technology Network (Afretec) is a pan-African collaboration of technology-focused universities from across the African continent. The creation of Afretec is a defining moment for the digital transformation of Africa. The network will build a strong knowledge creation and educational infrastructure on the continent. It will also provide a platform for its members to engage in deep collaboration that drives inclusive digital growth in Africa. The purpose of Afretec is to create a platform for technology-focused universities in Africa to drive inclusive digital growth by collaborating on teaching and learning, knowledge creation, and entrepreneurship activities within the area of engineering and technology.

Key Focus Tracks:

The Environment Track

• Regenerative agriculture and sustainable food production
• Access to reliable, green, and affordable energy sources
• Ensuring clean water and proper sanitation
• Utilizing water energy
• Food nexus applications and technologies

Social Track

• Enhancing supply chain management with added value
• Implementing sustainable waste management practices
• Considering population and resource dynamics
• Evaluating the impact of developmental projects on communities
• Exploring other social impact avenues

Economic Track

• Designing eco-friendly products through eco-design
• Exploring shared economy models
• Exploring other economic innovations

General Track

This track includes any other ideas that are related to the main competition theme, but does not fit perfectly in any of the first 3 tracks.

Objective & Rationale

The goal is to positively impact the planetary boundaries (PBs), considering factors like climate change, biodiversity, and more. The nine planetary boundaries are:

1. Climate Change: Measures carbon dioxide concentration impacting global temperatures.
2. Biodiversity Loss: Focuses on species extinction, vital for ecosystem health.
3. Biogeochemical Flows: Tracks nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, critical for ecosystems.
4. Ocean Acidification: 5-Absorption of excess carbon dioxide makes oceans more acidic, affecting marine life.
5. Land-System Change: Concerns land conversion for human use, impacting habitats and biodiversity.
6. Freshwater Use: Addresses consumption impacting rivers, lakes, and aquifers, affecting ecosystems and communities.
7. Atmospheric Aerosol Loading: Involves microscopic particles affecting climate and organisms.
8. Stratospheric Ozone Depletion: Protects the ozone layer, crucial for filtering harmful UV radiation.
9. Novel Entities: Involves chemicals, new materials, and organisms with potential irreversible effects on Earth’s systems, including pollutants like plastics and genetically modified organisms.

Therefore, the students are encouraged to create prototypes and proof of concept for products, services, and systems that address critical issues in pollution, ecosystem degradation, social injustice, and climate change impacts.