Students claim top prizes at Shaping a Greener Future Hackathon

Year 10 students from Cleethorpes Academy won first and second prize in a Hackathon organised by Ørsted and Edenic Group.

The Hackathon brings together people in the local Humber area to raise awareness for climate change and to develop strategies that can be implicated around our area.

Ørsted and Edenic Group hosted a morning of lectures and workshops based around climate change issues and Ørsted’s wind turbine technology.

In the afternoon, the teams were asked to pick a climate change problem and come up with a solution. They workshopped based on the evidence given in the morning.

They designed and presented different solutions in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style pitch to different people from local industries and Ørsted.

Cleethorpes Academy had two groups of students entered, who were among PhD students and adults.

The two teams from Cleethorpes Academy were awarded first and second prize for their designs and presentations of their project.

The girl’s team claimed first prize at the Hackathon. Maddison Hussey, Lucy Grant, Eleanor Benson and Lucy Lakin, designed a green energy car battery. The team suggested existing carbon cars could be traded in for an electrical vehicle, which can then be charged from solar panels on your home. The solar panels would power your home and your vehicle.

The team took the project further by suggesting that excess energy would be sold back to the PowerGrid to pay off utility bills.

Lucy Lakin said: ‘It was scary doing the presentation but we were confident with our design.’

The whole team agreed that presenting their project to local industries and Ørsted leaders was daunting.

Maddison commented: ‘We were up against adults and people with a lot of knowledge in this field, so we were really nervous.’

The boy’s team came second in the Hackathon, and was made up of Mason Brown, Alexander Clarke, Kaylum Evans and Jakub Paudyna. They decided to design a wind turbine, which would maximise the use of the wasted space below the turbine.

Kaylum Evans said: ‘We looked at existing wind turbine technology and thought about how we could make it better by adding more renewable energy.’

The morning workshops had showcased how wind turbine bases have a lot of wasted space, so the team chose to add the idea of tidal wave technology to the base, to solve the issue of wasted space and also create a second form of renewable energy.

They discovered that tidal wave energy makes up 30% of renewable energy and wind energy makes up another big percentage, so utilising both in one wind turbine would be a great use of them going forward.

Jakub Paudyna added: ‘The other teams seemed to be trying to make the challenge harder by making their idea complicated. Our idea was simpler and easier to explain.’

The team agreed with the girls that demonstrating their design was nerve wracking as there were a lot of big companies on the panel, but both teams did extremely well.

Rebecca Maguire, Geography Teacher at Cleethorpes Academy said: ‘We were very proud of the students for taking part, but coming first and second place in a room full of adults and PhD students was amazing.

Wayne Willis, Director of Edenic Group said: ‘It was a real pleasure to witness the creativity, ambition and innovative thinking displayed by the groups of students attending from the academy. Well done to them. It was a great day.’