IEEE PES Humanitarian Activity Committee (PES-HAC) is organizing the First PES-HAC Humanitarian Technology Project Design Competition (HTPDC) during the PES Day 2021.

The HTPDC is not just a project design competition, it offers:

  1. Online Training Sessions on Humanitarian Technology Project Design
  2. Live Virtual Discussion Forum
  3. Live Virtual and Online Feedback on Project Design
  4. Local and Final Rounds of Competition based on video presentation and virtual Q/A.

The HTPD competition focuses only on the detailed design part (not the physical implementation) considering the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes technical design along with brief analysis on community engagement, stakeholder’s mapping, sustainability, social impact, and business model.

The PES-HAC HTPDC 2021 initially received registrations from 65 Project Teams from 12 countries (19 IEEE Sections). After the training and open forum discussion sessions, finally 25 Teams could submit the detailed design (recorded eight minutes video presentation and a brief document). In each team, there are around 5-10 members. The teams are attending now Local Rounds at 6 different places (five countries) from 10th to 18th April. Top teams from the Local Round Competitions will be joining in the Final Round Competition.

The Final Round Competition and Award ceremony will be held during 24th and 25th April (Saturday-Sunday) from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM ET.

On the 10th April, three local round competitions (LRCs) were organized in three countries. In what follows, a brief overview of these local rounds is presented.

HTPD Local Round Competition-01

The first regional round of HTPDC was hosted virtually by Viswajyothi College of Engineering and Technology (VJCET), Kerala, India. Among distinguished guests, Ms. Sarada Jayakrishnan, Chair, IEEE Kerala Section was present. She inspired the project design initiative considering the importance of the “design” part. Engr. Ajith Gopi, Vice Chair, IEEE PES Kerala Chapter discussed the necessity of resilience system design for disaster management.

Dr. K. K. Rajan, Principal, VJCET appreciated the effort taken by the PES HAC as the teams are not only getting a chance to present their innovation, they can also see other innovations. Two distinguished judges from Kerala were: Dr. Aruna B. and Dr. Sony Kurian. From PES HTPDC, Dr. Shaikh Fattah and Ashraf, Chair, Project Training Team of HTPDC provided feedback during the competition.

Four teams presented their project designs. The teams are Team Electromaniacs, Team OA, Team JCET, and Team VAST. Presentations and Q/A sessions were very interesting. From the beginning, there were more than 60 participants. Special thanks to Mr. Anish, Branch Counselor of IEEE VJCET SB, Abba Mathews, Chair, IEEE VJCET SB and Albin Paul, Chair, Communication Team of HTPDC.

HTPD Local Round Competition-02

The HTPD LRC-02 was organized by IEEE PES Sri Lanka Chapter on the 10th of April 2021. There were more than 50 participants. The event commenced with the welcome speech by Dr. Sudeera Navarathne, the Chairperson of IEEE PEE Sri Lanka Chapter. He pointed out the significance of the initiative considering the fact that the competition inspired students to concentrate on the design aspect of the projects related to the broad areas of power and energy focusing on humanitarian technology and sustainable development.

Next, a session on “Unleash the Creator Inside You” was conducted by Dr. Akila Wijethunga. It was a valuable session for both participants and the contestants because it reflected the important skills and approaches required to become a successful innovator as an engineer. Next, an overview of the PES HAC HTPDC was presented by Mr. Chamika Sudusinghe highlighting about the competition and the activities conducted in the past two months.

Later, the four teams of the local round, Team 10 GigaWatts, Team RUET, Team ASGARD and Team TYRO, presented their project designs. Each presentation on the design of the projects was followed by an extensive question answering session and thoughtful discussion proving valuable insights for the participants.

Dr. Sudeera Navarathne, the Chairperson of PES Sri Lanka Chapter and Dr. Rasara Samarasinghe, the Chairperson of IEEE WIE Sri Lanka, were the two respected judges for the local round. As representatives of PES HAC HTPDC, Dr. Shaikh Fattah, Chair, HTPDC, Dr. Hussain Mahdi, Chair, Project Assessment Team of HTPDC, and Dr. Ashraf, Chair, Project Training Team of HTPDC joined the discussions on the presentations and provided valuable feedback to the participants. It was an extremely successful event, where both the participants and competitors were able to gain knowledge and resolve their doubts conversing with the judges and the PES HTPDC representatives. The event concluded with the thank you speech by Ms. Lasanthika Dissawa, the Secretary of PES Sri Lanka Chapter.

Thanks to Ashan Imantha, Lasanthika Dissawa, Dev Sugandika and Anushika  Lakmini for their kind support.

HTPD Local Round Competition-03 

On 10 April 2021, IEEE BUET Student Branch and IEEE BUET PES Student Branch Chapter hosted the third LRC of PES-HAC HTPDC 2021. Nayeeb Rashid, Chairperson, IEEE BUET SB, along with Maisoon Rahman, Chairperson, IEEE BUET PES SBC, began the online event at 6:00 PM with a brief description. Two respected judges of the HTPDC local round were Prof. Celia Shahnaz, Department of EEE, BUET and Prof. Dr. Shahriar Khan, Department of EEE, IUB. Dr. Shaikh Fattah, Advisor of the BUET PES SB Chapter, presented the detailed initiative of the HTPDC and he welcome the honorable guest speakers, judges and the participants. Dr. Celia Shahnaz, Chair, IEEE Bangladesh Section and IEEE PES WIP R10 Representative and Dr. Shahidul Islam Khan, Chair, PES Bangladesh Chapter also shared their greetings and inspiring words regarding PES Day Celebration.

The first invited speaker was Dr. Renu Sharma, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University. She offered a comprehensive presentation with real-life experimental results on design and performance studies of solar photovoltaic and hybrid energy systems for rural application. Dr. Thiago Alencar, Chair, IEEE PES CSAC, was the second speaker. He delivered his valuable speech on entrepreneurship tools as a way to improve humanitarian projects, which was very relevant for the participants of PES-HAC HTPD 2021. The next speaker was Dr. Ahmed Yousuf Saber, VP Optimization and AI at ETAP, USA. He gave a wonderful technical talk on ‘PV Hosting Capacity – ETAP Simulator’.

Between the technical talks, project design presentations with a live question answer session of HTPDC 2021 took place. Four teams were Team Innovators, Team Moritary, Team Technocrats, and Team JEC. All teams presented their ideas and the respectable judges and the PES-HAC representatives shared their insightful comments and evaluated the projects. HTPDC representatives Dr. Shaikh Fattah, Dr. Hussain Mahdi, and Ashraful Haque also provided feedback to the teams. This interactive session was the main attraction of the program. Finally, the judges and speakers shared valuable final comments. More than 40 participants from different universities of IEEE Region 10 attended this event.

Shaikh Fattah, Chair, PES-HAC HTPDC 2021
Albin Paul, Chair, Project Communication Team, HTPDC 2021
Chamika Sudusinghe, Communication Lead of LRC-02, HTPDC 2021
Maisoon Rahman, Communication Lead of LRC-03, HTPDC 2021