INSTEAD of relying on expensive solar panels to heat water, a group of Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC) students has found a way to heat water using roads in Singapore.

For their project, which involves installing water pipes under roads, the team of four JC2 students won $10,000 in cash, plus a trip to Germany to showcase their project to schools there.

The team was one of three top winners of the National Weather Study Project who received their awards from Law Minister K. Shanmugam at the Science Centre Singapore on Tuesday.

A total of 235 projects were submitted by 152 primary and secondary schools and junior college for the competition, organised by local electricity generator Senoko Power.

The competition, launched in 2005, honours ideas about going green, using information from mini weather stations installed in participating schools.

Tuesday's event even inspired Mr Shanmugam to consider making do with inconvenience as part of going green.

He told an audience of about 600 students, teachers and guests: 'I have a very environmentally-conscious wife. So it comes down, in very personal terms, where I find my shaving foam, being changed to something that's far less usable.

'So this morning, I decided I will put my foot down and say, no, I'm not going to use this, I'm going to go back to my shaving foam. But after coming here, maybe I will stop my act of rebellion.'

Measurements taking from the schools' mini weather stations are also fed into a central information repository which can be tapped on for research and real-life applications by the academic and public sector entities, said principal chairman of the project's advisory committee, Professor Leo Tan.

He said the winners were chosen based on how well thought through their ideas were.