BYU students design floating wind turbine for national competition

PROVO — A group of BYU students is hard at work designing energy-efficient solutions for a national competition.

More than 40 students from the BYU Wind Energy Club and an engineering capstone team will be submitting their work to the Collegiate Wind Competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. BYU was the only Utah university to have a team qualify for the first phase of the competition.

"The goal of the competition is to get colleges connected with the wind industry and to promote the wind industry in the U.S.," mechanical engineering senior Kyle Havey said.

The capstone students are tackling the design of a floating scale wind turbine. The engineers have to design and construct a working model of the turbine that will be tested in a wind tunnel and meet certain requirements that real wind turbines have to meet.

Havey said the students have been doing lots of prototyping, building their work off of previous BYU teams' successes and improving the design. The new twist this year is that the turbine has to be floating, which adds a challenge in making it buoyant while also sturdy enough that it doesn't fall over.

The team will test its prototypes in the BYU pool in the next few weeks to determine the durability of the design.

A portion of the BYU Wind Energy Club is designing a mock wind farm that would operate off the coast of Oregon. The students must research how the farm impacts the environment and people, what it would cost to build, and how efficient it is at creating energy.

Another part of the club team does "connection creation," which involves connecting with the local community through educational outreach on the energy industry.

Sophie Bartlett is an integral part of the connection creation team. She and other students have been organizing and conducting presentations at local elementary and middle schools to teach the importance of wind energy. Bartlett said social media has also been crucial in promoting wind energy.

"A super big part of this competition is connecting with the public — helping people realize how important clean energy is and showing what people can do when they get together," Bartlett said.

The second phase of the competition starts on Dec. 19, when the team has to submit its offshore wind farm design, turbine prototypes and a report on the community outreach. The 35 teams will be narrowed down to 12 that will move on to the final competition in May in Phoenix.

Havey said this year's team is the biggest BYU has ever had, and he thinks the group members' diverse backgrounds and majors have been beneficial.

"Previously, it's been mostly just all engineers ... so it's awesome to see all these people come together and work on one project together. I've really enjoyed seeing it," he said.

Havey said projects like this one help students experience how their education relates to the real world and can connect them with future jobs.

"I think it's great to get us to realize what the energy industry is like and why we produce clean energy and what benefits it can have on us," he said. "I can get experience here and connect with actual professionals through this competition."

As an early childhood education major, Bartlett said it has been fun for her to be part of something different.

"To have the chance to work with people from all over the place in many different professions and many different careers has really been opening to, 'Oh, this isn't just an engineering problem. This isn't just a concern for renewable energy.' It really is everybody working together for something that's really important," she said.

Bartlett said she is excited to see how far this team goes.

"All of our teams have made really good progress with how they are doing," she said. "I think we're definitely ahead of the game."

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