Page 39 - Waterfall City_Issue 11_2022

Riversdale and Caledon. The vehicles greatest distance. To make the event The Sasol Solar Challenge is the
were required to use the public more exciting, this year’s challenge first-ever solar event to incorporate
roads, sharing space with trucks and incorporated special stages, which such stages. This shows how much
regular traffic. At each stage, large were: a marathon stage (which started the event has grown and continues
crowds turned out to welcome the in Kroonstad and finished in Gariep) to drive innovation both in the
participants and school children were that required teams to work on their structure of the challenge itself and
given talks on how the technology solar cars in a closed and secured the technologies developed by the
was being utilised. area with limited workforce; as well teams,” commented Robert Walker,
as half and full blind stages, where Owner and Director of the Sasol Solar
There were a number of first entries information relating to the route was Challenge.
this year – the Genuine JV Solar Car withheld until the night before the
built by the team of high school teams took to the road. This forced Prior to the start of the event, a team
students, as well as entries from them to strategise at the last minute from the CSIR (Council for Scientific
UNISA, the University of the Free State, without prior preparation. and Industrial Research) was involved
Solar Flair built by a team of private in scrutineering the safety of the solar
engineers based in Mpumalanga, and “The teams found these new cars and performed electrical and
the current World Champions, a team developments to be quite daunting, battery safety tests. There was also a
of Belgian engineers that entered as but exciting at the same time, as they schools programme that ran alongside
the Agoria Solar Team. required them to work together to fix the event, which was conducted
their solar cars, navigate the route, in partnership with Microbotics, a
Strategy and adventure were the key measure speed limits, while also service provider that offers robotics,
themes for this year’s solar challenge, taking into consideration the need to programming and electronic modules
with the ultimate aim to cover the cover as many kilometres as possible. for scholars.

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