By Suha Alsubeihi

A team of the University of Jordan (UJ) engineering students and alumni will be competing with 21 teams from 16 countries in the finals of the first Solar Decathlon Middle East (SDME) for the design and implementation of sustainable solar houses.

The competition, themed ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’, will be held in Dubai in 2018 with total prizes worth at AED 10 million (over $2 million).

The team, dubbed 'Team Jordan', has been announced to participate in the first edition of SDME during the World Green Economy Summit (WGES) held on the 5th and 6th of October 2016 in Dubai, UAE.

At the final phase of the Competition, the teams will assemble their houses while undergoing the ten contests of the competition.

The contests evaluate cost-effective design, innovation balanced with market potential, water and energy efficiency, energy production and time-of-use energy, and communication strategies.   

'Team Jordan' is comprised of 11 students who studied and are studying Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Civil Engineering.

Their project, named "transpiriva", utilizes the simplest and latest solar energy solutions, to design a green building, combining cultural and economic criteria while taking into consideration environmental conditions (temperature, humidity and wind).

Project supervisors are Prof. Wael Al-Azhari, Architecture Department, Prof. Ghalib Sweiss, Civil Engineering Department and Prof. Ahmed Al-Salaymeh, Mechanical Engineering Department.

The Competition was created through an agreement between the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), and the United States Department of Energy.

The goal of SDME 2018 is to contribute to the knowledge and dissemination of industrialized, solar and sustainable housing.

First held in 2002, The Solar Decathlon is an international competition created by the U.S. Department of Energy in which universities meet to design, build and operate energetically self-sufficient houses, grid-connected, using solar energy as the only energy source and equipped with all of the technologies that permit maximum energy efficiency.

'Team Jordan' has also launched campaign "Our Sun Our Future" which aims at making Jordan an independent self-powered country in the near future.