This year’s Blott Matthews Challenge was to develop a plan to meet UK’s electrical power demand for the next 20 years. At the same time, the plan should have the potential to be carbon free by 2050.
In our team, we have Catherine, Una, Ulliana, Roni, Michelle and me. We were asked to assess the future demand of electricity, identify different carbon free means of generating electrical power and evaluate the advantages and constraints of each technology. Finally, based on the evaluations, we needed to develop a plan for electrical power generation and supply for the UK.
Our solution has a mixture of six different technologies: wind, nuclear, geothermal, solar, tidal, and hydroelectric power. For different parts for the UK, we developed plans using different technologies based on the population, geographical conditions, and many other factors. For example, for the south of England, we recommend building more solar power plants because there are more sunshine hours per day. We calculated the output and cost of our plan, making sure that the plan can meet the demand of the UK and is achievable at the same time.
After submitting our 20,000-word report and attending a virtual assessment interview with Richard Blott and Charles Matthews, we were thrilled to win 2nd Place in this national engineering competition!
Sybil, Lower Sixth.
