After winning the "Rookie of the Year" award, an upstart team of Baldwin Wallace University engineering students also claimed first place overall in the national 2025 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC).
The multi-level, nine-month-long competition, administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), required collegiate teams to design a device addressing a need in the Blue Economy powered by at least 51% marine energy: waves, tides, or ocean and river currents.
As they dove into emerging technologies and the Blue Economy in Northeast Ohio, Dusek says the students designed prototypes and conducted tests on three buoy shapes to align with Lake Erie's predominant wave characteristics observed using Cleveland Water Alliance buoy data. They also designed, built and tested (via their own "swing" test rig) a 24-coil magneto (an electrical generator that uses magnets) that generated sufficient current to light an LED.
During the process, students benefited from interviewing representatives from a range of Northeast Ohio partners, including the Port of Cleveland, Cleveland Water Alliance, NETSCo, Great Lakes Data Watershed and MECC industry mentor Aisha McKee.
