The Sky's the Limit!: Designing Wind Farms: A Hands-On STEM Activity for High School Students

Exposing students at an early age to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activities has been considered an important factor in influencing them to select a technical career path. The Center for Ultrawide-Area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks (CURENT) is an engineering research center jointly supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. At CURENT, we plan to develop innovative power grid and electronics activities to engage K-12 students as a way to introduce them to science and technology. For most university educators, such outreach programs are a new experience and could be time-consuming to establish. As a result, our group has assembled a few principles to guide us in devising our wind farm design activities, whose attributes are listed below. Later in this article, we provide information about obtaining activity design materials and a spreadsheet.