YORK COUNTY, Va. — A team of five students from Tabb High School in York County called the "THS Windbreakers" took home first place for the third year in a row at a world renewable energy competition called KidWind.
The team is made up of freshman Neel Dharni, junior Joshua Namkoong, junior Jack Kleb, senior Janie Qing and senior Dante Keil.
“Our main objective of the competition was to build a mock turbine, so we did that using a plethora of materials," said Namkoong. "It’s made of 3D printed materials, dowel rods, bamboo rods and window insulation.”
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The competition had four components. First was testing their knowledge of renewable energy, then instant challenges, which are on-the-spot challenges where the students had to create engineering projects featuring either wind or solar components in a time crunch.
They also had to test their turbine in a wind tunnel and give a presentation to a panel of field experts.
“It was a super fun environment, but it was also stressful, because we ran into some issues with our wind turbine where we had to move different categories and we had to retest all of our things, but it was fun because we got to meet all these kids from around the world,” said Qing.
In total, 97 teams competed from all over the United States, Taiwan, Mexico and Canada. The three-day competition was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
