ORONO, Maine — Numerous high and middle school students descended on the University of Maine campus Friday for the fourth annual Maine Wind Blade Challenge and the DeepCwind Consortium’s Windstorm Challenge.
Hundreds of students and teachers from more than 40 schools throughout the state gathered at the New Balance Student Recreation Center for the competition, which kicked off Friday morning and concluded around 4 p.m.
The challenges featured competitions for middle and high school students to design, build, implement and test wind power technology components similar to those used in a UMaine research program in deepwater and offshore wind power.
Susan J. Hunter, UMaine senior vice president for academic affairs, kicked off the ceremony with a keynote address while activities began with students testing components in the recreation center swimming pool.
The Windstorm Challenge is a middle and high school invention competition focusing on deepwater offshore wind technology.
The challenge asks teams to design and construct a floating platform for a scale model wind turbine, then create a thorough business plan and sales pitch.
The Wind Blade Challenge, a program developed by the Maine Composites Alliance in partnership with the Advanced Structures and Composites Center and the Maine Wind Industry Initiative, matches high school students with composites manufacturers in Maine to research, design and manufacture model wind blades.
The challenge culminates in a competition to see which team invented the most efficient wind blade.
All winning team members who go on to attend UMaine receive a $20,000 paid internship at the Advanced Structures and Composites Center.
Winners from the competitions are as follows:
Windstorm Challenge:
Overall 1st Place — Team MMA, Madison Area Memorial High School
Overall 2nd Place — Ben Danh Joe Alex, Madison Area Memorial High School
Overall 3rd Place — Seahawks, Boothbay Region High School
Overall 4th Place — Oober and the Goober, Middle School of the Kennebunks
Overall 5th Place — The Wok, Winthrop High School
Stability 1st Place — The Wok, Winthrop High School
Stability 2nd Place — Team MMA, Madison Area Memorial High School
Stability 3rd Place — W.I.B. – Seal Team 3, Old Town High School
Stability 4th Place — Lyndsay Marcus Hannah Cody, Madison Area Memorial High School
Stability 5th Place — Seahawk, Boothbay Region High School.
Wind Blade Challenge:
1st Place — Easton High School
2nd Place — Presque Isle High School Team No. 3
3rd Place — Mt. Blue High School
People’s Choice Award — Orono High School
Wind Blade Challenge Teacher of the Year — John McDonald of Foster Technology Center
Wind Blade Challenge Composite Partner of the Year — The Boat School of Eastport
Great job kids! I think its wonderful to get students hands on working experience.Good luck getting your wind projects built for real though, the enviormetalist wackos hate wind and hydro power.
a perfect storm
Yes, let’s give out money to the petroleum cartel. I’m taking it you have your money with them?
why so afraid of something new? You bought n paid for?
This has nothing to do with oil. Once again, since lemmings following the greenwashing can’t do the research, wind turbines have to do with the generation of electricity. Less than 2% of electricity generated in the USA comes from oil as a fuel. Wind is the most costly and least effective way of generating electricity. Sprawling industrial wind sites in Maine operating at less than 25% capacity factor are an environmental travesty.
This same pandering oil and coal scare won’t win your argument (we don’t burn oil and coal in Maine to make electricity) and it won’t win on Novermber 6th.
Oil and coal arn’t burned in Maine, but that desn’t mean that our power doesn’t come from coal! There’s a 42% chance it does. Canadian power won’t win in Nov. either. That ship has sailed
Fortunately your ship is powered by wind meaning it won’t go very far.
Wind is a loser and a scam that preys on the ignorant masses whose knowledge is sound-bite based. Feelgood solution like wind, unicorns and tooth fairies all sound good but don’t exist once one does even the smallest amount of research.
Huh? Ships don’t get far on wind power? LOL Farther than on Canadian Electricity
Quite wrong, what you consider environmentalist wackos, and which I call Big Green, love industrial wind. Those of us who fight it are rural residents whose ridge lines are being ripped apart for these misguided and useless projects.
The UMaine initiative is all about over-the-horizon offshore wind. That’s why they are testing in the pool in the picture.
http://www.deepcwind.org/
Thats the problem, there not YOUR ridgelines. Either buy them and post them or stop your crying.
Greenwashing at its worse!
First of all, you may call me kid if you can remember when Harry Truman was President. Second, I think you should look up the deffinition of Environmentalist.
With all due respect to the hard working and well intentioned students, the adults at the University have flushed about $2.5 million so far down the toilet for the wind turbine at Presque Isle, which, when running produces at only 11% capacity. What’s worse, it’s a supreme example of a coverup of a failure. This is what happens when following blind dogma trumps doing one’s homework.
Lots of stuff here that the University and the subsidy parasite wind industry liars don’t want you to know.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/page/maine-s-public-turbines
Start with:
“8/3/11 – A Brief History of University of Maine’s $2 Million Wind Turbine Experiment (49 page PDF document)”
GRID scale WIND is riding a subsidy tide.
Should the full Senate consider additional legislation concerning wind and other
forms of renewable energies, please be assured that I will examine it carefully,
keeping your thoughts and concerns in mind. O Snowe
Boston is insatiable.
Hydro-Quebec is GREEN.
WIND = 75% does not blow + 10-30% loss in transmission. 100 MW = 10 MW
I am getting sick and tired of the blatant pushing of such a false agenda of wind power by the media in this state. When there is extremely serious damage being done to our environment by blasting away our mountains for sprawling industrial wind sites and damage done to Mainers when wind turbines are being built on top of people’s homes, it is repugnant to see this poor science being exalted and our students “greenwashed”. It is shameful and immoral to set our state up for destruction and sell out its natural heritage and beauty for the most costly and least efficient form of power. It is the LIBERAL AGENDA at its worse and it must stop!
Precisely stated. Repugnant.
You would prefer blasting mountains apart for coal? Or maybe some of that oil from the Koch Bros? Maybe some of that so-called Tar oil from Canada? You people don’t understand that there are people who have to live in this world after we are all done crapping all over it! Let’s leave something for them. After all, they are going to be all that’s left of you and me. For generations we have been sucking the life out of this planet. At first because of ignorance and then because of greed. Stop paying lip service to the greedy pigs sucking up what’s left and start thinking of ways to make things better for everyone. If you don’t like wind power, come up with something better but leave something for my grandkids besides a burned out rock.
here here!! I whole-heartedly agree.. we are running out of coal/gas/fuel to run our power plants.. we need another option, wind by far is the least obtrusive, and costly to obtain. if you can find a bettter source of “clean/ cleaner” energy I’d be glad to hear it.. but until then I’ll side with the windmills.
You are right!!! Maine should not be blasting our ridges like the coal mining states. Maine should not be clearing miles of new trans. lines and hacking down trees like in the Tar Sands of Canada. Maine should be saving our state from senseless development. We need to reduce energy use not recklessly making more power through industrialization which got us in this mess in the first place.
I completely agree that the key issue here is energy consumption. In order to solve the energy problems this country faces, our culture and fundamental way of life must dramatically change. We need to learn to live with less, and use less. If we want to get anywhere close to energy independence or significantly decreasing our carbon emissions, we need to consume far less energy. This is where the problem lies. How do you change a culture, and a way of life?
Despite my knowledge on this need for a change, I still drive my car almost every day, buy food that has traveled thousands of miles to end up on my plate, and buy commodities that were manufactured half way around the world. I don’t have the answer for this problem. I can make personal decisions to not buy certain things, eat local food, and get rid of my car, but the truth is, the majority of America will not make that decision on their own, and energy consumption will continue to rise. I have no idea how to fix a problem that is so intertwined, and ingrained in our culture, but I do know that this is where the focus should be. This is what think-tanks should be discussing.
In the meantime, however, energy consumption DOES continue to rise, and fossil fuels DO continue to deplete. Until we find a solution to the root problem that I discuss above, we must look to clean alternative forms of energy. No, wind power is not THE solution, but it can definitely be part of a mosaic of deployed alternative energy technologies. There are costs and benefits to any industrial development. That’s why I’m saying it would be best to stop consuming so much. But we have to remember that these wind power companies have to conduct environmental impact analyses, as well as many other analyses in order to develop anything.
I’m no expert, but this is how I see it. We need to be looking at the bigger picture, and until we solve this societal problem we need to employ carbon-free energy technologies.
In the meantime, take a look at my 9 min documentary short on Maine newspapers’ coverage of wind power! http://youtu.be/f1ZdknMCBjE (this link will work in about 4 hours: 1:00pm)
Hydro was working fine until people decided that we should tear all the dams down so that the fish can swim upstream. Since we no longer have that, I guess we will have to burn more coal, and put up more wind turbines.
Maybe we should consider a thorium nuclear power plant, which is probably one of the best solutions we currently have. Wind is not only not the only alternative, it is one of the worst. Expensive, and inefficient. Lets not forget all of the energy that is used to transport all of the materials all over.
Also, not sure how the Koch brothers got thrown into this? Maybe you could explain?
Fish? I believe if you check history, there was a time when the salmon runs on both east and west coasts the rivers teemed with salmon. Why were they going up the rivers? To breed and lay their eggs. The world population of humans is exploding, and you would like to cut production of a source of food even more.
So the costs of transporting the materials to put up wind turbines costs more than the costs of transporting material to put up a nuclear power plant? How much does the costs of mining uranium factor into this, the costs of storing used fuel rods, etc. How much does it cost to transport wind? To manufacture wind? Does the wind have to be purified or filtered after it’s been past a trubine? Is it breathable?
Wind may not be the total answer to sustainable alternative energy. But it is a part of it. It’s quite possible that one or more of these school kids competing in this competition will have an idea that will revolutionize the industry.
Would you rather they just stick to making paper or working in the woods, how about raking berries, digging clams, lobstering, etc. Here’s an idea, they could get jobs digging holes for you nay sayers to bury your heads in.
I never said anything about uranium reactors, I did mention thorium reactors which are very different than uranium reactors. It is clean, safe, no nuclear waste, it can use spent uranium, cannot meltdown, cheap, and on and on and on….it’s good stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
Thanks for the link. It seems that we are still years away from implementation of this type of reactor. You still have the costs of building very high tech and complicated reactors. In the mean time we know that wind can generate power and is relatively cheap.
We have tidal power comming on line shortly, which I believe could be adapted in many rivers without daming them.
Wind is not the be all end all, probably never will be. It is however a part of what the future holds for this planet we all share.
42% of the power in this country comes from coal. Another 23% from Natural Gas. The Koch Bros. have their fingers in both.
As do a lot of people. I don’t think anybody is against alternative energies, what they are against is alternative energies that exist to push a political agenda. If an alternative energy makes sense, then great! Unfortunately, wind has a lot of drawbacks that make it not that great of an alternative energy source. That said, unlike the poster that you commented to, I do not see anything wrong with high schoolers learning about turbines and/or designing them.
I don’t want my tax dollars wasted on this promotion of a farce. It is bad enough that we waste tax dollars on subsidizing wind power, an industry that doesn’t exist without it. That is the testimony that windustry shills keep giving Congress as they grovel for the PTC to be extended. It is bad when we waste millions of taxpayer money on redundant research on science that shows no promise of improvement. But the worst is wasting tax dollars on these types of PR efforts to promote the wind industry.
The sad thing is the BDN giving more coverage to this staged event than the important public meeting held in Greenbush this week where the fate of Passadumkeag Mt. and the wonderful Downeast lakes is being at the mercy of wind zealots in the state DEP getting the ink ready to rubber stamp yest another industrial wind site, further ruining our beautiful state.
Maybe the students could have a competition where they start their own wind company? Invent reasons like reduce oil use, stop coal, end wars, reverse climate change, etc. Whoever can make the best sounding sugar coated excuses for demolishing rural Maine would be the winner!!! That would mimic the real world situation and help students prepare for an industry where the BS matters more than the science. Maybe applying for Federal subsidies could be a written competition with the winner having the best reasons why they deserve the Fed bucks. Of course, the number one reason for Fed money is to hire lots of lawyers to stifle citizens’ rights and promote the fantasy of windsprawl in language normal people have a hard time deciphering. I hope the kids have fun on campus, but I bet most will see thru the baloney.
Yep, let’s get all that federal subsidy money back from whoever got any. RR’s, aviation, oil, miltary expenditures protecting international shipping, etc. Hell, let’s just immitate Afghanistan. They seem quite content with no infrastructure or industry to speak of. No central govt., etc.
First of all, there is no need to be bashing a high school competition at UMO. These kids worked hard, learned a lot, and had fun doing it. Do you know the efficiency of most electrical generation systems? Other than hydro (tidal and current) most power generation plants run under 50%. As “gsgofer” said, us young students would like to be comfortable knowing that our predecessors haven’t left us in an energy crisis. I am in no means a “green” person or am “green washed” as you call it. I am educated in power systems and renewable energy. Anyone not in favor of renewable energies is either in denial or refuses to do a little research. Sure, land is being turned up and views are being compromised by these towers, but every other state has done it’s fair share of “development”. When these tower’s lifespans are complete, the cost of returning the land to it’s original state is by far the cheapest compared to other generation stations (i.e. Nuclear, Hydro, Biomass, etc.). It’s time to bite the bullet and support the new technologies that are being released. More funding and support will lead to more research which, in turn, will lead to better efficiencies. The original diesel engine didn’t start out at the 55% efficiency it is at now. It will get there. And by the way, if you’re worried about an environment “travesty” look at the plots of land oil refineries sit on.
You will need to change the laws of physics to make wind energy what the wind industry promises. Stand in a rushing river and you will be swept away. Touch a natural gas furnace and you will burn yourself. Stand in Maine’s wind and hear yourself say “that breeze feels good”. It is simply not a dense energy source and no amount of R&D will change that.
The fossil fuel industries spend many millions to discredit both climate science and clean energy technologies. Some of the comments regarding this competition can be attributed to that propaganda. Despite the few who are persuaded by the lies we will move into a future powered by wind, solar, and other clean energy technologies.
Dream on.
I invite—though I wish I could demand—all those who believe we should destroy Maine’s natural resources and beauty for a farce like feckless wind to move. Pack up now and leave, for you don’t deserve to live in the most beautiful state in the eastern USA. Have we all forgotten the findings of the Brookings Institute that says Maine’s “Quality of Place” is it’s greatest asset? Maine must not be turned into a wind turbine plantation!
The intention is to use off-shore wind turbines. You can’t even see them from the shore, so I have no clue how “quality of place” would be reduced. I mean, unless you live on some boat in deep sea and you go out looking for the turbines.
Apart from the politics. My students from Westbrook competed at UMO yesterday. They learned about working together to solve a challenging problem. They got a taste of what an engineer might do as a problem solver and also spent a day working with a Maine composite composite company, an industry with good paying jobs. It was a very positive experience for them.
FYI: The purpose of Wind Blade Challenge is to engage students in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics and to expose students to growing industries in Maine: energy, boat building, and composites. Being there all day yesterday I can say all of those goals were accomplished.