And That's A Wrap!

This year's World KidWind Challenge brought 131 student teams from 26 U.S. states, Taiwan, and Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona from May 18th through 21st. Lots of thanks to the coaches, parents, administrators and students for all their hard work to get to Worlds and the determination and resilience they showed across the three days of competition.

Each team met this year's extra challenging competition elements with enthusiasm, determination, and out of the box thinking! This year, wind teams tested their turbine in low speed and high speed tunnels, with everyone trying their hand at our Yawing tunnel, which rotated their turbines (mid-test) 90 degrees! As a twist this year, all teams also had a score component dedicated soley to the efficiency of their turbine. Plus, the High School Wind teams had to contend with our newly outfit Shark Super Tunnel. This brand new wind tunnel, invented and built by Dick Anderson from Wisconsin, allowed teams to modulate the wind speed with the twist of a knob from 0 to 14 m/s.

In addition, 18 solar teams showcased their solar homes under our new solar array, the Solar Blast. This year's Solar Challenge tasked teams with building a solar home—or smart home—with a special emphasis on purpose and context. We were blown away by their ingenuity and technical prowess. We hope to see even more Solar KidWind Challenge events next year!

As usual, each team also presented their design and process to a panel of judges and participated in multiple Instant Challenges and a knowledge test to round out their scored competition elements.

You can check out the Awards Ceremony here. Congratulations to all who ventured to Phoenix to demonstrate their clean energy knowledge! See you next year!