MADISON, WI - Onalaska High School students competed in the 2025 KidWind Challenge hosted by the Wisconsin Energy Institute at UW-Madison. The team, made up of OHS students Julianna Dunn, Shashi Getachew, and Kaarina Dunn, competed against 30 other times and won the Challenge's Innovation Award.

The competition, which requires student teams to design and build small-scale wind turbines and solar structures for the event, included 4 areas: A 30 minute presentation with questions, a data analysis instant challenge, a wave effect instant challenge, and a wind tunnel testing of our team-built wind turbine.

Onalaska's 30-minute presentation included a detailed report on how they designed, built, and machined a turbine, which included everything from the final measurements and weight of the turbine to the number of bolts and set screws used.

In the data analysis challenge, the team was presented with various energy flow charts about CO2 and energy generated in 2014 and 2021.

In the wave effect instant challenge, the students had to strategically place wind turbines in the ocean and produce the most amount of energy using the least turbines. In these two challenges, they were not given any materials to prepare with and had to use their knowledge of clean energy to complete them.

The final wind tunnel testing is something the students have been working on and preparing for the last few months. They won this category by having the best wind turbine, gear ratio, and blades.

In all, we won the Innovation Award because of our ability to overcome challenges and the efficiency and perfection of our turbine. - Kaarina Dunn, Onalaska High School Junior 
 

To learn more about the KidWind challenge, visit energy.wisc.edu/education/kidwind-challenge.