UNH student team wins national marine energy competition

A team of UNH engineering and business students won the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2024 Collegiate Energy Marine Energy Competition with a device that uses wave energy as a reliable power source for ocean data collection buoys. This was the second year in a row that the Wildcat team won first place in this national college competition.

The twelve-person team won for Drift-RMT, a renewable ocean data collection device that uses wave motion to generate self-sustaining energy. Their innovation could add several years to the battery life of marine drift buoys that collect valuable ocean and climate data.

“Marine energy resources are abundant, predictable, and have tremendous potential to deliver clean energy to our grid and maritime economy,” said Jeff Marootian, principal deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. “The students participating in this competition are paving the way for this new, emerging industry, and we look forward to their future achievements.”

Competing against 16 other teams at the Pacific Ocean Energy Trust’s Ocean Renewable Energy Conference in Portland, Oregon, the UNH team also won competitive business plan and technical design challenges. They may also need a bigger shelf with trophies: this spring, Drift-RMT won the competition for the award. Paul J. Holloway $15,000 award and the highest honor in ocean engineering at the undergraduate conference.

“It was great to see the team come together around this idea and to see subsequent versions of the device being built and tested in the UNH Wave Tank,” said team mentor Martin Wosnik, professor of mechanical and oceanic engineering and director of the Center for Ocean Engineering. “The Chase Ocean Engineering Lab provides students with an ecosystem of support related to all things ocean, and students really started camping here during the spring semester.”

Wosnik is the director of the Atlantic Marine Energy Center (AMEC), an association of several East Coast universities funded by the Department of Energy. The students were also mentored by Erin Bell, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering.

Drift-RMT team members include mechanical engineering majors William Moore ’24, Matthew Carlson ’24, Riley Desmarais ’24, Nate Hixon ’24, William Lindsay ’24, and Will Weete ’24; environmental engineering majors Jack Kearing ’24, Kara Wittmann ’25, and James Wood ’24; ocean engineering majors Allison Kelley ’24 and Kevin Moriarty ’24 and entrepreneurship studies major Cameron Vose ’24.