Penn State Wins Collegiate Wind Competition on Home Turf

College students just proved that the future of clean energy is in good hands.

Penn State's Wind Energy Club claimed first place overall at the 2026 Eastern Region Collegiate Wind Competition, held on their own campus from May 14-16. The team also won first place in two separate categories and earned the People's Choice Poster award, sweeping the competition against nine other universities.

The annual competition challenges undergraduate students to design, build, and test small wind turbines while also developing plans for real-world wind energy projects. Penn State competed against schools including Johns Hopkins University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Maryland.

For the turbine design challenge, students created working wind turbines from scratch. They designed their own blades, generators, electronics, and software, then tested their prototypes in wind tunnels housed in Penn State's engineering building.

"The turbine is an interdisciplinary project at its core," said Augustus Platt, a third-year engineering student who served as club president. "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 team also designed a proposed onshore wind farm near the Hobart and Stamford communities in New York. Their detailed report covered environmental impacts, community benefits, and financial analyses.

The Ripple Effect

What stood out most wasn't just the competition itself but how teams collaborated. Students from competing universities shared ideas, lent each other parts, and supported one another's success.

"They chat, they share ideas, they listen and they lend out parts to each other," said Susan Stewart, the club's faculty adviser and a teaching professor of aerospace engineering. "It's a very open and collaborative type of environment."

This marks the ninth time Penn State has placed in the top three since the competition launched in 2014. Industry partners including GE Vernova and Invenergy sent judges and speakers to connect students with real career opportunities in renewable energy.

The skills students gain translate directly to professional work. Stewart emphasized that learning to integrate complex systems prepares students for immediate career success in the growing clean energy sector.

The Wind Energy Club is already recruiting new members for next year's competition, welcoming anyone interested in aerodynamics, manufacturing, or embedded systems.

These students are building more than turbines; they're building the renewable energy workforce of tomorrow.