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RDP students earn recognition for renewable energy engineering technology project

Nov 19, 2022 | 10:54 AM

Four Red Deer Polytechnic students have earned provincial recognition for their Capstone engineering technology project.

The nomination as finalist for Capstone Project of the Year was recently announced for the former team of Kyle Salaway, Tyler Podgorenko, Kyle Bennett, and Mathieu Lapointe by The Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET).

The project itself was intended to tackle the increasingly critical need for renewable energy resources in the battle against climate change, says ASET. The problem with that is renewable energy resources such as wind and solar are only available at certain times.

The former quartet’s project, which was a micro-scaled Compressed Air Energy Storage System (CAES), explored how to store energy generated by renewable energy resources for time periods of non-generation or when peak demand is in effect.

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Their goal: to design and build a system that uses stored heat and compressed air to generate power. A micro-scaled project that is successful would indicate it could be done on a larger scale also, to produce a significant amount of electricity.

“As a society, we have continued to investigate and work more and more with different renewable energies. It’s very important to further this research so that we can find efficient ways to harvest and store renewable energies that supply our demand for energy while also protecting the environment,” says Podgorenko.

“These innovations in renewable energies should be of interest to Albertans because they have the potential to affect our daily lives and there continues to be new developments in how energy can be harvested and stored. Many of these methods can continue to be tweaked to increase efficiency and, in our case, scaled to smaller sizes to fit different demands.”

Podgorenko says the team worked on the project for the entire post-holiday semester.

For Podgorenko, this was the second time he’d been recognized by ASET, winning the same award in 2021.

“These kinds of projects are a clear indicator of where innovative employers and government will go, and there will be a real, and in most cases positive, impact on every Albertan, especially if we can lead in this field as we have in so many others. Alberta’s primary industry is energy, and it is in the process of a long-term shift. This will be our future,” says ASET CEO Barry Cavanaugh.

“Alberta is committed to leadership in renewable energy development, and the sooner we can develop meaningful sources of renewable energy, the sooner we can reduce or perhaps someday eliminate the dependence on fossil fuels. In some ways, we’ve only begun in this area, and innovation is the key. If the kind of initiative and innovation demonstrated by most of our Capstone projects is any indication of the public interest in this area, corporations and government will lead the way.”

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