Joshua Parker, a senior at Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu, won first place and $10,000 in the 2020 Spellman High Voltage Clean Tech Competition.
“I was sitting in my room with my mom when they announced the winners,” he said in an interview. “When I saw my name, I didn’t believe it at first. I was really happy because I put in a lot of work, and it was really important because it gave me a big confidence boost to continue my project.”
Parker competed with 20 finalists. At stake was a $60,000 cash prize the top winners would split.
Parker’s first-place project in the Limited Resources category is “Hawaiian Hydropower,” which generates electricity by using tidal currents that pass through fishponds.
In its ninth year, the worldwide competition “encourages scientific understanding of real-world issues and the integration of environmentally responsible energy sources.” More than 744 pre-college youth registered from 10 U.S. states, Canada, Singapore, the Philippines and India. Out of 395 teams, only 240 submitted their projects for judging online.
This year’s theme was “Reducing Individual Impacts.” Teams displayed their projects offering solutions to issues relating to climate change or protecting resources using clean technology.
“The students who participated this year did a remarkable job considering the challenges they faced during the global pandemic,” Loren Skeist, president of Spellman High Voltage Electronics, said in a news release. “At Spellman HV we believe it is critical that we encourage young people to develop technology that will enhance the lives of people around the world.”
The idea for Parker’s Hawaiian Hydropower was inspired by his work with the volunteers and community organizers for restoration efforts in the Kaneohe fishponds.
He said he wanted to combine his passion for helping the environment and building things.
The challenge Parker faced with the project was finding funding for the instruments. Out of his pocket, he paid for the propellers. Then he applied for a grant to help pay for the generators and sensors.
He said he’s been developing the project for two years. At first he used three propellers and three generators, and with the help of a couple of sensors, he can see the speed of the currents and how much electricity they generate.
In the first efforts of the project, Parker noticed that it wasn’t generating as much energy as he hoped. So he redesigned it into a larger generator to conduct more electricity — it worked.
“The first try of my prototype, it was generating 40 watts, which is enough energy to power a portable speaker,” he said. “The last try was 90 watts, and that’s enough to power two laptops.”
Along with his $10,000 cash prize, Parker will be assigned a mentor to further develop his project.
