The Ram Pump – Pelton Wheel skid. (Supplied)

By rdnewsNOW Staff

Innovative Excellence

Former RDC engineering technology students win Alberta award for renewable energy project

Jun 24, 2021 | 1:41 PM

A former team of Red Deer College engineering technology students have been recognized for modernizing a centuries-old device and transforming it into a source of renewable energy.

Officials with the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET), say the students have won this year’s Capstone Project of the Year Award.

For their end-of-term Capstone Project, officials note former students Tyler Podgorenko, Michael Nosterud, Spencer Otto and James Greenough decided to take the ram pump to the next level.

In existence since the Roman Empire, the ram pump uses the potential energy of flowing water to pump the water to a higher elevation. However, the team added a game-changing component: a turbine in the form of a Pelton wheel, which can be used to extract energy from the impulse of flowing water and generate clean electricity.

Renewable energy is energy that is sustainable and can’t be exhausted: endless like the heat from the sun. Clean electricity, also known as green electricity or green energy, is described as electrical power produced by methods that use renewable energy resources and do not cause pollution.

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How the Pelton wheel works, according to officials, is it converts the kinetic energy of the turbine (moving energy) first, into mechanical energy. Then, the generator portion of the system creates electricity from that through a conductor or wire wrapped around a metal core. As the core spins between two poles of a magnet, a current is induced on the wire because it is cutting through the magnetic field. The ram pump/Pelton wheel system is connected to a battery so that the energy can be stored and utilized when needed.

The ram pump, modified and elevated by the former Red Deer College team to be a source of clean electricity, can be used for off-grid housing or farms in rural areas. It’s also well-suited for livestock operations, allowing water to be brought in safely with no negative impacts on the environment. And, it has the potential to provide an effective solution for third world countries where water access is a challenge.

“For me personally, this was a passion project. I grew up in Nelson, BC in the Kootenays where there are multiple dams in the region that use turbines to generate electricity,” said Podgorenko, in a press release. “My dad works on some of those dams and I developed a connection to them. It was a natural choice to pursue this kind of engineering technology work.”

“The former Red Deer College team that won this year’s ASET Capstone Project of the Year Award embraced an idea long rooted in the history of engineering technology and updated it to fulfil a global commitment to identifying sources of renewable energy,” said ASET CEO Barry Cavanaugh. “It’s practical, flexible, cost-effective, and highly scalable, not to mention good for the planet.”

The Capstone Project of the Year Award was established by ASET in 2017 in response to overwhelming member interest in stories about Capstone projects undertaken by teams of engineering technology students from NAIT, SAIT, Red Deer College, and Lethbridge College as part of their end-of-program requirements.

Each of the four polytechnics and colleges submit the top two projects annually for consideration. From those eight maximum submissions, the ASET awards committee names one of those projects the winner of the Capstone Project of the Year Award. The remaining seven submissions are honoured as finalists. A total of seven teams of engineering technology students competed to win this year’s award.