FEP students win international competition to reuse solar panels | Sustainability

A solution for reusing end-of-life solar panels won an international prize for a group of students from the Faculty of Economics of Porto (FEP), in a competition in Oslo, Norway. In this year’s edition of the competition BI International Case Competition (BIICC), participants developed two projects – one lasting six hours and the other lasting 30 hours, with case studies for two companies: Circle K Norway and Statkraft​. “We knew who the companies were, but [o caso] It could be anything,” Inês de Castro, one of the students on the team that came first, told PÚBLICO.

The student group’s winning proposal “was based on reusing a solar panel after 20 years [de utilização] in student residences”, inspired by cohousing in the European Union where solar panels were used. The team’s strategy allowed reusing 99% of the materials, and the company on which this case study was based was having difficulties in this process.

“Only part of the panel was recycled and this part was worth very little of the value of the materials that were used in the production of the panel”, explains Inês de Castro, in conversation with PÚBLICO. “The company recycled 60% [dos materiais], but this 60% was 10% of the value of the panel”, adds Inês Moura. And they decided to develop a method in which it was possible to do this. The team was made up of four members: Constança Araújo, Inês de Castro, Inês Moura and Vasco Silva, students in the first, second and third years of the degree in Economics at FEP. They came first in the case study of Statkraft, a renewable energy.

A BI International Case Competition it was contested by 12 teams from different universities around the world. The annual competition challenges university students to solve case studies and present solutions to strategic problems in real companies. The second case study referred to the company Circle K Norway, with a challenge about car sharing, and the students only had six hours. Here, the FEP team came second in the competition that took place in February.

This team of students is part of the FEP International Case Team (FICT), a student organization whose main objective is to solve case studies, under the guidance of faculty advisors and teachers Renata Blanc and Catarina Roseira. “All the training we do beforehand gives us a lot of preparation so that we can then face any type of topic that is presented to us”, considers Inês de Castro, highlighting that the preparation stage was “essential” to enable us to achieve the award.

“These competitions are a unique opportunity for students to put into practice, in an integrated way, the knowledge they acquire during their degree. They learn to identify problems, think in a structured way and build arguments that support the ideas they want to defend”, said professor at the University of Porto Renata Blanc, who accompanied the students, in a statement. Furthermore, the teacher reinforces that “what distinguished FEP was above all the strong quality of the solution presented, the robustness of the analysis carried out and also the solidity of the financial calculations”. “As we only have those six hours, we do our best to make those six hours the most productive of our lives”, says Inês Moura.

Text edited by Claudia Carvalho Silva