Press release: Twenty-one-year-old Joe Garrett, a Mechanical Engineering student from the
University of
Birmingham has secured a spot in the final
of the Engineers in
Business Champion of Champions innovation competition, which will be hosted by TV
presenter Rob Bell at the Royal Academy of Engineering on 22 October 2021.
Joe Garrett invented AuraGen, a new way of generating
electricity and will be pitching his innovation against nine other teams of
student and graduate innovators in the national final. A sum of £15,000 is up for grabs, providing vital
seed money to help the winners develop their innovation.
The winners will also receive mentoring from business
leaders who are members of the Sainsbury Management Fellows network, plus CV packages from Purple
CV and
entrepreneurial books from Cambridge University Press.
The competition organiser is the registered charity, Engineers
in Business Fellowship which champions business education for engineers and supports
universities by giving them grants to award prizes to students who develop ground-breaking
ideas.
The grants enable universities to
inspire more engineering and technology students and post-graduates to
participate in innovation and entrepreneurship, skills that they take into
their careers. The world is changing rapidly,
and these skills are vital to tackle challenging global problems.
AuraGen
– A New Way to Generate Electricity on Your Roof!
AuraGen is a vertical axis wind
turbine (VAWT) that can be mounted onto the pitched roof of residential or
commercial properties to generate electricity.
By using the elevation of the roof, AuraGen can reach faster, more
consistent flowing air. The design uses
a frame to mount AuraGen to the roof, distributing the loads and also allows
solar panels to be added (hybridising the energy generation). By utilising the existing height of the
building, AuraGen does not require a tall support structure. This increases
stability, allowing AuraGen to employ a wider diameter turbine; boosting the
power generated and its efficiency.
VAWTs can generate power with wind from any direction and work in low
wind speeds.
Joe’s brainchild will enable people to generate electricity that can be
used domestically and potentially charge electric vehicles overnight. He explains how he came up with the idea: “While working with my father as a labourer one
summer, I was struck at how much stronger the wind is on the top of
scaffolding. Roll on a few years and I came across vertical axis wind turbines
on my university course. Putting the two ideas together led me to try and
design a turbine that could harness the untapped energy of the wind, and so
AuraGen was designed. My innovation could increase the prevalence of renewables
and de-carbonise domestic and low-level commercial electricity generation.
“I am so pleased that I had the opportunity to learn more about business
innovation at university. The rise of
electric vehicles and companies like SpaceX show that traditional engineering
ideas are being challenged. Therefore, engineers with business knowledge are important
to commercialise new technologies which could have positive impacts on the
environment and socially.”
The
Awards Presentation Ceremony – 22 October 2021
The live online dragons’ den style competition will be compered by TV presenter, Rob
Bell. Competing
against nine other teams, Joe Garrett will have six minutes to convince the
judges, through his presentation and Q&As, that he should be crowned a
Champion of Champions and take home a cash prize of between £1,500 and £8,500
depending on the award or awards received!
Amongst other criteria, the judges will be assessing the potential
positive impact of AuraGen on the environment.
The judging panel are:
Dr
Andy Phillipps, Entrepreneur and
early-stage tech investor and venture capitalist
Ana Avaliani, Director of Enterprise and
Sustainable Development, Royal Academy of Engineering
Dr Jeroen Bergmann, Associate Professor of
Engineering Science, University of Oxford
Serge Taborin, Government Digital
Transformation, Amazon Web Services
Joe
will be competing for an Engineers in Business Champion of Champions title against nine
other teams from the Aberystwyth University, University of Nottingham,
University of Aberdeen, University of Exeter, Imperial College London,
Nottingham Trent University, University of Portsmouth, University of Sheffield
and the University of York.
Commenting
on the next stage of the competition Joe said, “I’m excited to have reached the final of the
competition and look forward to presenting my idea to the judges and audience
and hopefully turn AuraGen into a reality.”
