First, contestants were asked to submit presentations describing their innovative ideas about the use of windfarms. The authors of the most interesting projects were invited to take part in the second stage of the competition, where they presented their ideas to a live audience. Two teams and one individual competitor representing the Warsaw University of Technology qualified for this stage.

The project chosen by the Jury focused on using the Power-to-Gas technology to prevent energy generation instability in offshore windfarms. The project was created by three PERG students: Agata Kapczyńska, Łukasz Kobos and Kacper Kwidziński. The young power engineers proposed a solution which makes it possible to tap into any surplus power and carbon dioxide captured from the flue gas emitted by conventional power plants to produce “green methane”. This would allow for the storage of energy, which could then be used to offset insufficient power generation capacity in offshore windfarms. In their presentation, the team also compared the projected Polish power structure to its current German counterpart and used this as a basis to calculate the profit to be derived from the venture. The calculations suggest that the idea would solve the problem of power generation instability by means of energy storage, while at the same time making it possible to limit CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. In addition, it may become profitable with time.

The third place went to another representative of the PERG – Teodor Sawicki. In his work, he focused on Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) and a power plant which relies on the decompression of air stored in underwater containers.

The second place in the Students / Ph.D. Students category went to a graduate of the WUT Faculty of Electrical Engineering – Jakub Kutyła. In his work entitled: “HVDC as the driver of future Offshore Wind Energy”, he shed new light on the development of the technology used for the evacuation of power (electric power transmission) generated by offshore windfarms as high-voltage direct current (HVDC).

Excerpts from 2020 MEWy Awards winning presentations

The MEWy Awards is yet another competition in which the PERG has received awards. In November, the students were hailed an ECO-Innovative Student Research Group in the ECO-Innovators competition.