COMET WIND ADVANCES AT NATIONAL COLLEGIATE WIND COMPETITION
Within three short years, the Comet Wind team at The University of Texas at Dallas is establishing itself as a formidable competitor at the national level while building community and interest in wind and renewable energy at a local level among students at the University.
“With this competition comes a lot of risk,” said Sahi Chundu, incoming president of the Wind Energy Club. “But when we succeed, it’s extremely rewarding. We develop our instincts when things go wrong, then we learn to troubleshoot in the right way. We will carry these skills with us for our lifetimes.”
The University’s Comet Wind team, the competitive arm of its Wind Energy Club, placed fifth out of 40 total institutions who began the competition in fall 2023 at phase 3 of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC), an event hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Department of Energy. The event was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, alongside the 2024 CLEANPOWER Conference and Exhibition in May. The group has also received nearly $18,000 in funding from NREL. Most importantly, the group has begun a movement to inspire renewable energy and to prepare students for careers in this area.
Comet Wind team members from UT Dallas set up their wind turbine prototype at Phase 3 of the 2024 Collegiate Wind Competition.
The NREL competition is best known in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UTD for its turbine design and testing section. The University initially became involved through Dr. Todd Griffith, a professor of mechanical engineering and expert in offshore wind turbine development. However, as the group has expanded over the years, they have also participated in two more critical areas of the competition during the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 seasons, including creating a comprehensive project development and business strategy and an education-and-outreach plan needed to make renewable energy a reality.
“Most industries today are very multidisciplinary,” said Griffith, who sponsors the competitive Comet Wind team and the Wind Energy Club. “Wind energy is a mature technology, but there are still many problems to solve. We’re always trying to innovate to improve reliability, to reduce the cost of electricity or to go into new markets, such as in a very harsh offshore environment. Students benefit from working together and learning from the challenges they have faced.”
The 2023-2024 CWC Comet Wind team was led by electrical engineering students Fernando Harmjanz BS’24 and Pranav Marthi BS’24 and mechanical engineering PhD student Robin Reeves BS’24. Subgroup leads and students who went to competition include mechanical engineering juniors Julius Weiler and Jose (Joey) Vanegas; Ethan Ferguson BS’24 in electrical engineering and current master’s student; Pranav Marthi BS’24 in electrical engineering and current master’s student; computer engineering senior Srinidhi Malladi; senior fast-track electrical engineering student Chundu; business administration graduate student Lana Vu; mechanical engineering junior Alyssa Tran; senior fast-track mechanical engineering student Sasha Luich; senior electrical engineering student Varsha Thomas; senior electrical engineering fast-track student Abner Beltran; electrical engineering junior Kevin Sun; systems engineering master’s student Kyle Settelmaier; and Jason Newman BS’24, current master’s student in electrical engineering.
The University of Texas at Dallas’ Comet Wind team traveled to Minneapolis to participate in the 2024 U.S. Department of Energy’s Collegiate Wind Competition. The team includes (back row from left): Dr. Todd Griffith, Kyle Settelmaier, Julius Weiler, Jason Newman, Pranav Marthi, Fernando Harmjanz, (middle row from left): Lana Vu, Kevin Sun, Jose (Joey) Vanegas, Dan Bouzolin, Robin Reeves, Abner Beltran, Ethan Ferguson, (front row from left): Alyssa Tran, Sasha Luich, Sahi Chundu, Srinidhi Malladi
and Varsha Thomas.
Faculty advisors included Griffith; Dr. Matthew Gardner, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and Dr. Jeanie Aird BS’18, program director of UTDesign® Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS).
Griffith has an extensive research portfolio consisting of offshore wind turbines as well as more traditional technology. He began by including undergraduate researchers in his laboratory, and the first four Comet Wind team members worked directly with him as researchers. All four are now in graduate school, including one who is working as a PhD student in Griffith’s laboratory.
When Griffith began his career at Sandia National Laboratories, he attended the CLEANPOWER Conference and Exhibition where he observed the student teams participating in the CWC each year.
“When I saw the teams competing, I thought if I ever become a faculty member at a university, then this is something I really want to do,” Griffith said.
Dr. Todd Griffith, right, guides the Comet Wind team with his extensive expertise in wind engineering, but the students are driving the team to success.
BRINGING TECHNOLOGY TO THE REAL WORLD
The project development segment of the event requires students to plan a new renewable energy project, which was based around the Great Lakes for the Spring 2024 competition.
“I think all of us are in this club because we wanted something that was fun, but something that was also meaningful and feels like if we continue along this trajectory, we could really help the world in some way,” Chundu said.
Project development involved researching and planning the implementation of an offshore hybrid wind farm. Student teams selected one of the Great Lakes regions, and UT Dallas chose an area on Lake Michigan to plan a hydrogen hybrid wind farm where hydrogen is generated from the offshore wind farm’s electricity production.
The connection creation component of CWC incorporates community outreach. In this case, UT Dallas participants visited Guyer High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to create a renewable energy-centered curriculum for an AP Environmental Science class.
For the five-week-long collaborative project focusing on cross-technology, the team helped students create a clean city design based on multiple forms of clean energy, that emphasized the benefits of wind energy in particular.
At the competition, team members prepared a story and metrics report. They delivered their findings with a final presentation
and poster.
Comet Wind team members Jose (Joey) Vanegas (left) and Robin Reeves (right) take their wind turbine prototype to its debut at the 2024 CLEANPOWER Conference and Exhibition.
DESIGNING THE BEST TURBINE
The turbine design component of the CWC is perhaps its best-known, and it requires collaboration primarily between mechanical and electrical engineering specialists. Due to the multiple functions of wind turbines, the team has lead designers designated to create specific components.
Mechanical aspects of the wind turbine include aerodynamics, manufacturing, kinematics and the turbine’s foundation. Aerodynamics involves designing the blades and nacelle, a streamlined outer covering that houses the wind turbine’s components.
Kinematics focuses on the pitching mechanism, the blade and the blade mount. The team’s goal is to establish an improved coefficient of power for the blades, a measure of efficiency used by the wind turbine industry that is a ratio of the actual electric power produced by the wind turbine divided by the total wind power through the turbine blades at specific speeds. This subsection requires testing in the University’s Boundary Layer and Subsonic Tunnel (BLAST), one of just a few of its kind available to students in the United States.
The foundation component of the turbine competition includes building the turbine’s underwater structures and installations. Typically, an offshore wind turbine is designed to drill down into the seabed (sand or surface under a body of water), and it needs to remain securely attached in place. From testing, the team aims to improve the foundation’s stability each year.
Electrical engineers also contribute to two important areas — turbine-side electronics and load-side electronics.
Turbine-side electronics focuses on pitch control. Specifically, team members design a way to rectify three-phase AC current to deliver a steady DC current, because fluctuations will cause problems with function. The group members code microcontrollers and use PSpice, a form of design analysis, and PSIM simulations. Due to the high-pressure competition environment, the team decided to use a printed circuit board (PCB) design this year, which provided additional control and predictability.
Load-side electronics focuses on power control. The team attempted to use a buck-boost converter, a versatile DC-to-DC converter, but ultimately changed plans to have more control during the competition. They used a variable resistor bank and power-specific resistors and tested to ensure the wind turbine can stop safely, which is an industry standard.
The team tested the wind turbine in the Jonsson School’s Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, as well as in BLAST, the University’s professional-grade wind tunnel that can simulate a broad range of wind and atmospheric conditions that could affect the wind turbine’s performance. Ultimately, they gained a sense of confidence through working together over many months to work through difficult problems, Chundu said.
“We like to build,” Chundu emphasized. “One of the biggest things I was able to take away from this experience aside from the teamwork is learning to trust myself in an autonomous, student-led project.”
The Comet Wind team uses UT Dallas’ wind tunnels for testing prototypes, including the Boundary Layer and Subsonic Tunnel (BLAST) and a smaller wind tunnel located in the Engineering and Computer Science West Building, pictured above.
CHANGES IN THE WIND
Incoming Wind Energy Club officers Chundu and Malladi say they are particularly interested in expanding the professional development, networking and outreach aspects of the Wind Energy Club within the UT Dallas community so that they expand beyond the outreach part of the CWC competition.
“Sustainability was part of my interest, but I hadn’t explored it in depth until I joined the Wind Energy Club,” Malladi said. “I think learning about different kinds of renewable energy is moving us into the future.”
While the club initially began with a handful of engineers interested in wind and renewable energy, the club will seek to invite more industry speakers as well as host networking events. Staying for pizza after regular meetings is one simple way for students to get to know each other before preparing for the next round of competition. They also plan to visit a wind farm in the coming months.
Club members who have participated in the CWC have adapted to a new challenge — creating a floating offshore wind turbine model. Teams generally needed to rework their designs to meet the new design specifications for the 2024-2025 competition year. So far, their work has paid off. In January 2025, the UT Dallas team was selected once again to compete in Phase 3 of the Collegiate Wind Competition to be held in Phoenix, Arizona.
“The biggest challenge for the CWC team is the new floating foundation. Floating offshore wind turbines are completely distinct from the more traditional onshore wind turbines, such as those we have in Texas,” said Luich, mechanical lead. “Floating wind turbines are needed in deeper water sites and require floating systems that undergo wave loading. Because of the environment for deep water wind turbines, the wind direction is hard to predict and requires a new method for the turbine to consistently face the wind. This may lead to a complete redesign of the turbine, which certainly adds more challenges for the mechanical team. We’re trying to boost mechanical engineering recruitment this year!”
The 2024 Comet Wind team at the 2024 CLEANPOWER Conference and Exhibition. Team members include (back from left): Abner Beltran, Dan Bouzolin, Kyle Settelmaier, Fernando Harmjanz, Jason Newman, Sahi Chundu, Julius Weiler, Pranav Marthi, Dr. Todd Griffith, (front from left): Sasha Luich, Lana Vu, Kevin Sun, Alyssa Tran, Robin Reeves, Varsha Thomas, Srinidhi Malladi, Jose (Joey) Vanegas and Ethan Ferguson.
Chundu added, “You know, we’ve been doing things one way for our lifetime as a competition team, and this is a completely new challenge. Like with everything completely new, there’s going to be a learning curve, but I’m more than confident that we’ll be able to meet the challenge.”
During the summer, Luich completed an internship at Leeward Energy, while Chundu interned at Texas Instruments Inc. Both are well-positioned to continue in renewable energy fields, particularly wind energy, which is another major motivator for Griffith to sponsor the Comet Wind Competition team.
“Our students are preparing for graduate school, and they’re finding connections they need to build careers in wind energy,” Griffith said. “That’s one of the biggest benefits to the club. We want students to know that they are welcome and can get involved at all levels, whether you are studying mechanical engineering and want to earn credit working in my lab or you are a business or geology major interested in a career in renewable energy.”
As with most UTD student organizations, the students themselves are spurring the growth of the Wind Energy Club. “Our students are competitive — they are absolutely driving the outcome of the competition,” Griffith said. “They have desire to learn, a desire to contribute and a desire to win, and they put in the hours. The good news is that we have very talented, motivated students at UT Dallas, so I expect them to continue building upon the strong foundation they have established over the past few years.”
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