The Siemens Junior Cyber Junkyard competition is aimed at technical high schools and FET Colleges across the country. Through a pre-defined project and donation of Siemens automation equipment, it helps develop the skills of young learners whilst encouraging them to pursue further studies in science, engineering and maths at a university level.
Supported by LOGO! Micro PLC for home automation, the high school students this year had to tackle energy efficiency in the home. They had to construct a model house and design, build and program a fully functional energy management and optimisation system. Principles of load balancing, power usage and basic logic control along with the principles of cost management had to be implemented.
“The aim of this project is to expose future engineers to electrical design, mechanical manufacturing, energy usage optimisation and industrial automation programming at a young age. The project will provide a simple system to introduce theory and problems, to demonstrate energy and cost control and to train learners in programming a PLC,” says Kenneth Naicker, channel manager Siemens Automation Systems.
The winners of the five regional competitions participated in a national competition which took place in September. Judges were impressed by the high standard of the projects and the degree of innovation, with many good ideas emerging. In the face of stiff competition, St. Johns emerged as the winner.
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