World Solar Challenge team joins founders of prestigious global alliance

It’s official, the Durham University Electric Motorsport (DUEM) team is the UK’s longest running solar car team.

Led entirely by students and backed by the Institution, they recently competed in the World Solar Challenge (WSC) across the Australian outback, the only UK team to do so, completing 1000km of the 3000km route. Soon after, the team became a founding signatory to the prestigious World Alliance for Efficient Solutions, launched at the UN Climate Summit in Bonn by Solar Impulse pilot, Bertrand Piccard.

Team member Tobias McBride talks to us about DUEM’s determination to spread the word about engineering and sustainable solutions, and the huge value of the Institution’s support.

It went tremendously well given the circumstances. We were the only UK team able to compete, despite having one of the smallest budgets in the competition, and covered more ground than many entrants.

But we were hampered by some significant issues, from rain in the outback, depriving us of the solar source, to temperatures that reached 45 degrees, which led to problems such as the battery pack overheating. These issues put a lot of stress on the car and support vehicles. 

We were determined to drive the car across the finish line and it was really emotional, a great achievement that we’ll never forget.

We were delighted to receive the World Solar Challenge Award of £5,000 from the Institution. Our association with such a prestigious body over many years has highlighted the engineering and sustainability values that we share with all our partners . Frankly, without the Institution we could not have got to Australia!  

It’s not just financial support: we are all members of the Institution, benefiting from the library, its knowledge network and thought leadership. It’s an extra resource there for us to develop and extend our skills, now and in our future careers.

We had taken the car to Marrakesh for the UN Climate Summit and Formula E-Prix in 2016 and met Bertrand Piccard, renowned for the Solar Impulse endeavour. It was an amazing opportunity to put DUEM on the world stage. 

Piccard launched the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions at COP23. We were honoured to be there as one of the official founding members. Too often, sustainable solutions to global energy issues reside in small start-up companies and universities: the alliance aims to be a catalyst for a lot of these solutions to get publicity and come to market. What does membership of the Alliance represent?

Membership represents a shared commitment to efficient solutions. The alliance is free to join, but standards are high so it’s an incredible honour to be one of the few hundred founding members. In a year’s time, Piccard will be taking just 1000 sustainable solutions around the world to governments to finesse and bring to market. 

Every challenge is a learning experience for us. We do all of this outside of our degrees, in our own time. For 2019 we’re developing a new vehicle and we want it to be even lighter, even more efficient. We are considering improved solar cell technology, more energy-dense batteries, and improved carbon fibre usage and manufacture.

We’ll also aim to secure more financing behind us, so we can get out to Australia earlier, acclimatise better and build in more testing time. 

We promote the message to ‘do what you love doing’ and think differently about our planet’s resources. Sometimes that’s on a world stage and sometimes it’s at a local school in Durham. Our aim is to encourage kids to be engineers and to promote STEM in sustainability.

• Find out more about DUEM
• Find out about the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions