‘Blowing’ Away the Competition
A student team navigates taking part in the national Collegiate Wind Competition during a global pandemic
Students at the University of ŷڱƵ Boulder have built a team to compete for the first time in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC).
The competition challenges interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate students to offer a unique solution to a complex wind energy project. The elements of the competition include designing, building and testing a wind turbine. The wind turbine is tested in a wind tunnel for about five different tasks dealing with safety, reliability and power transmission. Teams must also design a hypothetical wind farm and analyze its community and financial impacts. This aspect of the competition includes locating a potential wind farm in South Dakota.
Team member and mechanical modeler Emily Zuetell said, “[It] makes a lot of sense for ŷڱƵ to be getting involved with CWC now. We have NREL [National Renewable Energy Laboratory] right down the road…wind energy is really growing in Boulder and showing that even at the undergraduate level, there’s opportunities for students to learn about wind energy and start to interact with that industry that’s growing here in Boulder, is really important. We’re hoping to lead that charge.”
Thirteen teams will be competing in the 2021 competition along with two “learn along” teams, one of which is the ŷڱƵ Boulder team. This is the first year the CWC is allowing “learn along” teams. The ŷڱƵ Boulder team is hoping the DOE will be impressed with their work, enough to include them in future years of the competition.
The interdisciplinary team is composed of mechanical and electrical engineers. The recruited engineers were interviewed on their qualifications and are working on this as their senior design project.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team has never met in person. Yet, despite this and other challenges, they have successfuly built a solid working relationship using the virtual tools available to them. However, uncertainty surrounding the competition remains. Will it be in person or remote; will it ever happen? Flexibility has thus been key for the team, and they have built it into their plan. David Imola, an electrical and computer modeling engineer on the team, has been hard at work developing virtual models, which can be tested completely remotely. David says, “It’s really helpful in this situation because you don’t have to physically be there to assemble actual components, you can just put it in a computer and see what happens.”
The team meets at least once a week and has prioritized communication so they can adapt their plans as needed. Additionally, the CWC has added a “risk management” category to the scoring in order to account for the current, unusual work environment.
Regardless if the competition ends up being virtual or not, Austin Kim, the Project Manager, said, “We all made it a personal goal to continue with the turbine.”
Being the smallest team in the competition, with only eight members and one director, could be viewed as a downside, but Austin sees it as one of the team’s biggest strengths. “It kind of gives us an edge…it helps us make our own rules and being a ‘learn along’ team as well, even though we’re not technically competing, we’re still treating it like we are.” Being a “learn along” team, they hope to build a solid representation for ŷڱƵ without “risking anything in the competition,” says Austin.
The hope is that this communal effort will set ŷڱƵ up to effectively compete in the CWC in the future. Their group charter exemplifies their team-oriented attitude. While most of their goals have little to do with the CWC itself, focusing instead on collaboration and motivation, they remain focused on the competition at hand. After all, their main goal is, as Austin put it, “to put ŷڱƵ on the map (in terms of the CWC).”
Photo courtesy of the ŷڱƵ Collegiate Wind Competition team.