NTN Sponsored University Team Wins the International Small Wind Turbine Contest

NTN is a proud sponsor of the University of Manitoba’s Wind Energy Design Team (WE Design), a student-led design competition team comprised of undergraduate and graduate students from biosystems, civil, computer, electrical and mechanical engineering. The team, not unlike many other student teams, provides an opportunity for students to develop professional skills in the designing, manufacturing, and project management of a small-scale wind turbine.

Utilizing a wind turbine designed with NTN automation linear bearings, the team was able to compete at the International Small Wind Turbine Contest (ISWTC) in Delft, Netherlands against eleven other design teams from universities across the globe. After days of testing and adjudicating, the team was declared as the first-place winner in the “Most Sustainable Design” category.

Team Lead, Hunter Waytt, describes what it was like on the first day of testing as “nerve-racking”.

“Everything goes completely silent in the controls booth as everyone stares intently at the turbine, waiting for any sign of movement. The room hums a little bit with the sound of the wind tunnel starting up in the room over, and nobody… not even the judges or competition organizers can take their eyes off this thing. And that’s when it happens… in a split millisecond the turbine does one full rotation. Two rotations. Before you know it, everyone has moved their focus onto one another, cheering and celebrating a successfully built prototype.”

Waytt credits the hard work of his teammates, advisors and the generosity of NTN and other supporting sponsors with this team success at the competition. NTN contributed linear bearings for the pitch mechanism of the turbine application and provided consultation to help the students engineer a design that would be  both modular and easy to install.

“We compete against teams led by graduate students and professors with years of experience in the field,” said Waytt. “This was all made possible by the tremendous amount of support we received from our university and a few key companies, like NTN, who nudged us in the right direction this year. We are grateful to NTN for supplying bearings and engineering consultation to support our victory in the face of brilliant competitors. It is completely surreal what you can accomplish when you dedicate yourself to a cause you believe in.”

NTN Canada will continue to sponsor the team  as it prepares for the next competition, hoping to capitalize again on their skills and talents.

"It is wonderful to see the engineering students from the University of Manitoba embracing NTN technology and to see their commitment to learning is already paying off, having won the International Small Wind Turbine Contest (ISWTC) in the Most Sustainable Design category,” said Pete Buller, Technical Service Specialist at NTN Canada. "NTN values this opportunity to assemble the brightest students from Canada’s leading universities and share with them the bearing technology trends that will shape the future.”

NTN Bearing Corporation of Canada and the Price Faculty of Engineering congratulates the WE Design Team on this exceptional win. 

WE Design’s Wind Turbine incorporating NTN linear bearings displayed in the testing tunnel at the International Small Wind Turbine Contest in Delft, Netherlands.