Students involved in the KidWind Challenge have to study and build a working turbine and blades. This is the result from one of Coach Shellenberger’s teams.
It is the ultimate challenge: build a team, engineer a turbine, learn about wind power, and test your creation in a wind tunnel to calculate its output power.
The KidWind Challenge is an annual event that lets students explore the power of wind by building and testing their own wind turbines. Over 10,000 have participated in KidWind Challenges all over the U.S.
This year, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) will host the 2016 National KidWind Challenge at the AWEA WINDPOWER 2016 conference in New Orleans from May 23 to 24, thanks to support from GE Renewable Energy. WINDPOWER is the premier wind-energy conference in the world and includes all of the major wind companies and developers.
With support from AWEA, students and their coaches will get to attend the conference for free, and will be able to interact with a variety of industry professionals.
“I have been working for three months on a KidWind Renewable Energy Challenge as a coach of seven teams, and have had two of my teams place 2nd and 3rd in our local tournament,” shared KidWind coach, Lynn Shellenberger.
Two of Shellenberger’s KidWind Challenge teams have worked hard and advanced to the National tournament at AWEA’s WINDPOWER 2016 in New Orleans.
“The Knock Outs and Kitty Wind have earned the honor to advance to the national tournament in New Orleans!” she added. It’s worth noting that eight out of the seven students on Shellenberger’s teams are girls, and all speak fluent Spanish and are enrolled in Spanish Immersion in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The goal of the National KidWind Challenge is to provide a venue for the top-scoring participants of local KidWind Challenge Events and the Online Challenge winners to compete in one location.
At the National KidWind Challenge, we expect more than 30 teams to convene from 16 regional events and the Online Challenge. The competition will involve tunnel testing, judging by engineering staff, instant competitions, and student presentations.
Top performers can win a share of over $10,000 in cash and prizes.
“KidWind has been an amazing experience for these young students,” added Shellenberger, “And now several of these eight students are considering a career in engineering.”
The conference is free for those who made the finals, but airfare and hotel is not. To help send students to the KidWind nationals, please click here to donate.
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