The window mill designed by a team of three students of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the Knowledge Institute of Technology, Salem, won national-level runner-up prize at the ‘GE Edison Challenge Contest 2014’ conducted by General Electric (GE), Bangalore.
A total of 55 institutions from across the country, including reputed institutions such as IIT Delhi, IIT Roorkee, IIT Guwahati, and IIT Varanasi, participated in the contest and submitted 206 innovative ideas. Five ideas among them were shortlisted for the final round.
The selected teams were awarded seed funding of Rs. 50,000 each to develop their prototype model.
In the final presentation with working model, the KIOT students team comprising K. Karthik Raja, K. Prabhakaran and D. Suresh, secured runner up position and a cash prize of Rs. 5 lakh for their contribution in the field of renewable energy.
Window mill developed by KIOT students, is a new design to maximize the efficiency of vertical axis wind turbine which has its own remarkable features. The problem in current design is wind opposition where one part of air supports the rotation of blades and other part opposes its rotation.
The proposed design overcomes the existing wind opposition problem and improves the wind energy utilisation thereby maximizing power production.
The students had developed the idea under the guidance of N. Suthanthira Vanitha, Professor and Head, Department of EEE.
KIOT was the only college from Tamil Nadu which got shortlisted and awarded cash prize.
