Members of Penn State's Wind Energy Club test their wind turbine prototype during the 2026 Eastern Region Collegiate Wind Competition, which took place from May 14-16 in the Engineering Collaborative Research and Education (ECoRE) building on the University Park campus. Credit: Danielle Blake/Penn State.
Penn State places first overall in Eastern Region Collegiate Wind Competition
The Wind Energy Club also placed first in the Turbine Design and Testing and Project Development and Engagement competitions and earned the People’s Choice Poster award
July 29, 2026
By Emily Liu
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s Wind Energy Club placed first overall in the 2026 Eastern Region Collegiate Wind Competition, which took place from May 14-16 in the Engineering Collaborative Research and Education (ECoRE) Building on the University Park campus. The team also earned first place in the Turbine Design and Testing and Project Development and Engagement competitions and earned the People’s Choice Poster award.
Each year, the Collegiate Wind Competition sees teams of undergraduate students from colleges across the United States design, build and test small wind turbines, develop plans for a large-scale wind project, and conduct outreach to foster connections with the wind industry and with local communities. Penn State has participated in the Collegiate Wind Competition every year since the event was launched in 2014, and this year marks the ninth time the University's team has placed in the top three teams overall.
Other institutions competing at this year’s Eastern Region event included the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, North Carolina State University, Western Michigan University, Northeastern University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the City College of New York and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“What's always nice about these events is when teams across competing institutions interact,” said Susan Stewart, assistant dean for academic support and global programs and teaching professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, who serves as the Wind Energy Club’s faculty adviser. “They chat, they share ideas, they listen and they lend out parts to each other. It’s a very open and collaborative type of environment.”
For the Turbine Design and Testing category, participating teams designed wind turbines within fixed specifications, aiming to produce as much power as possible across a range of different wind speeds and accomplish multiple safety and control objectives. Each day, they tested their turbines using one of the wind tunnels housed in the ECoRE Building, recording their scores and adjusting their prototypes as needed for the remaining tests. All of the teams were provided with safety training and supervised access to facilities in the Learning Factory, which supported them as they made last-minute design modifications.
Augustus Platt, a rising third-year undergraduate student majoring in engineering science, served as the president of the Wind Energy Club during this year’s competition.
“The turbine is an interdisciplinary project at its core,” Platt said. “We designed and manufactured our own blades, generator, electronics and software. It’s a small enough project that you can understand how the different pieces of the puzzle fit together, but making the turbine efficient and reliable is very difficult.”
The Penn State team presented a poster during the competition, summarizing their respective designs for a wind turbine prototype and an onshore wind farm in New York. Credit: Danielle Blake/Penn State.
For the Project Development and Engagement category, each team was tasked with designing a wind project to fit the needs and constraints of their assigned region. Penn State’s Wind Energy Club proposed an onshore wind farm near the Hobart and Stamford communities in New York, presenting a report on permit analyses, environmental impacts, societal impacts and financial analyses.
The Penn State team also summarized their designs in a poster, which was selected by competition participants to receive the award for People’s Choice Poster.
“One big learning outcome from this experience is a skillset in system integration,” Stewart said. “The competition element really drills in those lessons on how to not only make sure each component works by itself, but also how to handle the new variables that come into play when you put everything together. I think that’s one of the best parts of the Collegiate Wind Competition for helping students build skills and perspectives that they can apply right from the outset of their careers.”
Platt said the Wind Energy Club is looking for new members for the upcoming academic year.
“We work on the turbine throughout the whole year, and things really heat up during the competition,” Platt said. “It’s a lot of fun once school is over, and we can focus 100% on getting the turbine ready. We are always looking for new members. If somebody is willing to put in a good effort, and wants to learn about aerodynamics, electromagnetic modeling, manufacturing or embedded systems, there’s a place for them in the Wind Energy Club.”
The following students served as team leads during this year’s Eastern Region Collegiate Wind Competition:
- Augustus Platt, president
- Rochelle Xavier, aerodynamics co-lead
- Matthew Rickard, aerodynamics co-lead
- Nicholas Taylor, electronics co-lead
- Basam Ahmed, electronics co-lead
- Jackson McCarten, software lead
- Ethan Wang, testing lead
- Austin Simone, integration lead
- Shreshth Singh, robotics co-lead
- Kestian Orsetti, robotics co-lead
Several industry partners participated in the event, including judges from GE Vernova, Invenergy and Northland Power. Penn State alumni at ABS Wind, Emerson Automation Technologies and Clearway Energy Group spoke during a discussion panel led by the director of REpowering Schools, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preparing students for careers in wind energy. Mortenson also provided financial support, which helped make the event possible.
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