A team comprising some 300 level students of the Department of Physics and Solar Energy and the Faculty of Agriculture with their lecturers were at the first ever Nigerian Universities research and development fair held in Abuja. The team gave a practical demonstration of the potentiality and application of solar energy as an alternative source of energy, particularly in the field of Agriculture.

With the team at the fair ground was George Adebiyi, a Fulbright research Professor of Solar Energy from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mississippi State University, USA. The research covered the phases of design, fabrication, testing and evaluation of solar energy devices. The goal of the research undertaken is to develop solar energy applications from locally available materials (as far as possible) that will tap the abundant (natural) solar energy in Nigeria in a cost-effective manner.

The appliances researched into and displayed at the fair were:

• Solar crop/food dryer
• Solar Oven, for  cooking, baking and high-temperature drying
• Solar distillation unit and
• Solar electricity generator, for lighting, powering a barbing studio, operating a fan and a laptop.