Thank you to EVERYONE who participated in this year’s RACV Energy Breakthrough. We salute your achievements and admire your passion and energy. We hope you were Powered By Imagination.
Congratulations – you did it!
Would you like to see the provisional results?
If you have any questions or queries about any of these results, please get in touch via our Contact Us page.
It appears this year Highview manage to win the off track components of the competition even when the aren’t entered in the category… 😉
Hey Jono,
Not sure what you mean?
During testing/training on Tuesday evening 21/11/17 our vehicle was damaged to a degree that we had no time to repair it, so we transferred the 12 volt and 36 volt systems into the 2016 EEV, changed seat belt mounts to 2017 spec, etc, etc, over the next two days to get to /EB in time.
Our VCAL year 11/12 students and staff did a great job on the rebuild, however on lap 316, approx 8am on Sunday, our 36 volt system failed and we had to retire from the competition, 24 hr trial.
We are however, elated to receive the Design and Construction award for EEV.
Thank you to all the staff and volunteers connected with the /EB who made it possible for schools like us to compete at this excellent educational competition.
Regards DonElliott
Holmesglen Team Manager
We are puzzled with the results for “Innovations in Technology”. We son’t believe the judges truly understand the term “Innovations in Technology”
Our children (team Glendal Mussels) worked so hard for the project investigating alternative power sources to use over a two month period. They started off with (1) Wind power – Sail (2) Mouse trap energy (3) Solar (4) Rubber bands (5) Balloon Powered propeller (6) Penny cell. At the end they resorted to (1) Solar Power (2) Mouse Trap Energy & (3) Chemical Energy.
(1) For solar power they learned about parallel and series circuits as they ended up using 9 solar cells.
(2) For mouse trap energy they did 2 different units before selecting one
(3) For chemical energy, they initially tried a penny cell, then an aluminium-copper electrolytic cell, finally resorting to much simpler Aluminium Air Cell (made of Aluminium, charcoal & copper wires – THIS IS NOT A BATTERY AND CANNOT BE CHARGED). Children even found out that TESLA has applied for a patent for this technology and RENAULT & ALCOA tested it on a production car and acheived 1600 Kms with no charging involved.
Apart from all this they spent a considerable amount of time learning about Mussels and why they needed protection. They presented their findings to the judges.
RACE: They had one of the fastest lap times of the day – 22 seconds without touching/pushing their craft, however they have received one of the lowest scores.
We were puzzled when the winners were announced. The winners used an elastic band and a 12V Drill to store energy. Most other teams used either rubber bands or solar power.
Our team used 3 forms of energy – solar, mouse trap & chemical energy (Aluminium Air Cell), the last one being latest in technology, even companies like Alcoa, Tesla, Renault-Nissan are pursuing this technology by applying for patents.
TESLA: https://electrek.co/2017/02/13/tesla-patent-metal-air-battery/
ALCOA: https://www.arconic.com/global/en/what-we-do/aluminum-air-battery.asp
RENAULT: https://www.eurometaux.eu/blog/to-berlin-and-back-with-aluminium-air-batteries/
RACE RESULTS:
Glendal Mussels came in with 22 & 41 seconds (TOTAL 63 seconds) – Scored 17 points !!!!!
Water Striders (Team 15) came up with 21 & 43 seconds (TOTAL 64 seconds) – Scored 22 points ?????
INNOVATION IN TECHNOLOGY:
Drill & Elastic band can score 64/75
Technology that Tesla, Alcoa & Renault applied for patents scores 49/75.
Could some one please explain if the results above and title of competition “Innovation in Technology” has any relationship.
My sincere apologies for such a long post. I’m just frustrated with the poor judgement made for hard work of our children. We can’t even show these results to our children, it is very discouraging to see.
Hi Ravi,
As we’ve clarified on email, your team was judged correctly on the day and performed exceptionally well in the Trial. However, your team lost points for not meeting the invertebrate theme and for other aspects as well. We appreciate your enthusiasm in relation to the Innovations in Technology category over many years.
~ Nigel @ EB