ORONO, Maine — Around 300 middle and high school students from across the state descended on the University of Maine Friday, vying for a chance at a $20,000 paid internship, or an opportunity to be creative and get some engineering experience under their belts.
The eighth-annual Maine Wind Blade Challenge and the fourth Windstorm Challenge were held Friday at UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center.
As in past years, members of the winning teams in each challenge will be offered paid internships at the UMaine Composites Center if they enroll at UMaine. Those internships are valued at $20,000 each. The center employs about 180 undergraduate and graduate students each year.
The first-place team for the Windstorm Challenge was from Falmouth High School. A Bangor High School team took home first place in this year’s Wind Blade Challenge.
For the first time, both challenges were held under the same roof. The Alfond W2 Ocean Engineering Lab, featuring a wind and wave simulator, opened this year, allowing the students to test how their floating wind turbine bases stood up against waves and wind on a 1:50 scale.
For the Windstorm Challenge, their designs faced the equivalent of 60-foot swells. Sensors on top of the turbines measured how stable they were against the wind and waves. The floating bases were cobbled together with a vast array of materials, ranging from pool noodles and empty plastic bottles to round snowsleds and chunks of foam.
In the Wind Blade Challenge, students created their own designs and shapes for wind turbine blades. The designs were tested to determine which entries generated the most energy in three minutes.
Students showed their work to industry experts and pitched their designs, defending their efficiency, cost and effectiveness. Teams were scored on the performance of their designs and the quality of their presentations.
Habib Dagher, director of the composites center, said the events are key to the future of engineering in the state and the potential development of wind power off the Maine coast.
That industry will need thousands of employees as it ramps up to full-scale offshore wind farm developments in the next decade, Dagher said.
“We’re confident that some of the best future engineers, scientists and entrepreneurial leaders were here
today, and our goal is to inspire them with opportunities in our state,” Dagher said.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.