Secondary School Contest on Energy
The Student Association organized a National Energy Study Competition for the first time in 2009 with the intention of creating a tradition. Our aim was to get to know the world of energy better with high school students and to promote energy and electrical engineering education. The competition was attended by more than 1,200 high school students in 2010. In 2011, students from transborder Hungarian-language educational institutions were able to enter the competition series. The competition was organized from November to February, adapting to the deadline for applying for admission to higher education. We hope that we can help students make their decision by getting to know first hand the basic tasks, topics and university courses of these professions before applying for admission. The competition consists of three rounds each year. The first round traditionally consists of three shorter online energy-related tests that are sent to teams on a weekly basis, which are compiled by the membership of the Student Association from multiple-choice questions and simple calculations.
The 20 teams that advanced from the first round will be given a problem-solving task in the second round, with approximately one month to develop. After the expiry of the deadline, their results must be presented to the jury of the members of the Student Association by videoconference.
The most successful 10 teams can compare their knowledge with interactive, creative tasks in the final held at the BUTE. This way we can assess the knowledge they have learned during their preparation and how they can apply these skills in practice. This year’s final could be again a two-day event, where we were trying to focus on getting to know each other and making friends in addition to the tasks. Besides the competition between teams, we also pay attention to schools and reward the school that delegates the most finalist team of the year.
In the school year 2022/2023, 90 teams from various secondary schools in Hungary applied for the Secondary School Contest on Energy. The main topic of this year’s competition was energy efficiency and energy use in buildings. The first round of the competition was conducted in a similar way compared to last year, and it consisted of four minirounds. In three of these, they had to solve multiple-choice, calculation and other types of tasks online, covering almost all areas of energy, from nuclear energy to energy markets. In one mini-round, as a bonus task, they had to design their own power plant, in which many creative ideas were born.The best 20 teams could advance to the second round, where they had to plan the energetic renovation of a given municipal building. Based on the given data, the competitors had to calculate the building’s heat balance for every day of the year, and then calculate the annual costs of electricity and natural gas used. Aware of all this, they had to choose from a catalog that was provided by us which investments they would implement in order to modernize the building. Among others, they could choose from different types of insulation, condensing and wood-burning boilers, various heat pumps, solar panel and solar collector systems, and lighting modernizations, and we also gave them the opportunity to build the district heating system. The task was to use the investments to cover the necessary heating and cooling needs, to keep the internal temperature constant and to reduce the annual energy costs. They had to consider the renovation from several points of view: energy efficiency, feasibility, payback time and providing comfort. The multi-round competition continued in January 2023, when they presented their results in the second round, and the top 10 teams could compete for the first place in the final.