The UVic Renewable Energy Club (UREC) is a multidisciplinary group of students dedicated to making a difference in the fight against climate change by tackling inefficiencies in the field of renewable energy and sustainability. UREC has a competition stream and a projects stream, as well as support teams like communications and finance.
UREC is always looking for new members of all proficiency levels to join our ranks. While we are an engineering based club, we welcome any UVic students — all you need is the passion to make a difference.
Competition
The competition stream is focused on competing in the Solar Decathlon Building Design Challenge — an annual competition hosted by the US Department of Energy. The goal of the challenge is to design a sustainable building that considers ten different categories including embodied environmental impact, integrated performance, and energy performance among others. Details about the Solar Decathlon can be found here.
A secondary initiative of the competition stream is to develop a new Canadian renewable energy focused competition that can be hosted by UREC in the future.
Projects
The project stream is much more open-ended and always open to project proposals. The only qualifiers are that it’s powered by renewable energy and has educational/ environmental/or community benefit.Â
Recently, the team has been working on modelling UVic as a microgrid using Simulink to explore energy usage on campus and analyse potential methods for incorporating more renewables. Last year, the team built a pyranometer for measuring solar irradiance and developed a PV power system for a small carbon capture device. The current projects include building a renewable-powered automatic hydroponic garden system and designing a small-scale wind turbine.
Contact us if you have any ideas for future projects!
Thanks for checking us out and feel free to contact us if you have any questions!
