wind winners

Houston students take home top prizes at DOE wind energy competition

Rice Wind Energy had a strong showing at the DOE's 2025 Collegiate Wind Competition. Photo courtesy Rice University.

The student-led Rice Wind Energy team clinched second place overall at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2025 Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC), which challenges students nationwide to design and build wind turbines, develop wind energy projects and engage in public outreach to promote renewable energy.

“The Collegiate Wind Competition is such an incredible opportunity for students passionate about sustainability to gain industry-applicable, hands-on experience in the renewable energy space,” senior and team vice president Jason Yang said in a news release.

The event was hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories at the University of Colorado Boulder campus. Over 40 teams entered the competition, with just 12 advancing to the final stage. The competition comprises four core contests: connection creation, turbine design, turbine testing and project development.

Rice Wind Energy had the largest team with 26 students advancing to the final stage of the competition. It picked up a first-place win in the connection creation contest, and also placed third in the project development, fourth in turbine testing and fifth in turbine design contests.

“This accomplishment is a testament to our focus, teamwork and unwavering determination,” senior Esther Fahel, Rice Wind Energy’s 2024-25 president, said in a news release. “It’s a remarkable experience to have watched this team progress from its inception to the competition podium. The passion and drive of Rice students is so palpable.”

In the Connection Creation contest, the team hosted a wind energy panel with Texas Tech University, invited local high school students to campus for educational activities, produced a series of Instagram reels to address wind energy misconceptions and launched its first website.

The team also developed an autonomous wind turbine and floating foundation design that successfully produced over 20 watts of power in the wind tunnel. They were also one of just a few teams to complete the rigorous safety test, which brought their turbine to below 10 percent of its operational speed within 10 seconds of pressing an emergency stop button. It also designed a 450-megawatt floating wind farm located 38 kilometers off the coast of Oregon by using a multi-decision criteria matrix to select the optimal site, and conducted technical modeling.

“I am amazed at the team’s growth in impact and collaboration over the past year,” senior Ava Garrelts, the team’s Connection Creation lead for 2024-25, said in a news release. “It has been incredible to see our members develop their confidence by building tangible skills and lifelong connections. We are all honored to receive recognition for our work, but the entire experience has been just as rewarding.”

Rice faculty and industry sponsors included David Trevas and faculty advisers Gary Woods and Jose Moreto, Knape Associates, Hartzell Air Movement, NextEra Analytics, RWE Clean Energy, H&H Business Development and GE Vernova, Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing, Rice Engineering Alumni and Rice Center for Engineering Leadership.

The BYU Wind Energy Team took home the overall first-place prize. A team from the University of Texas at Dallas was the only other Texas-based team to make the 12-team finals.

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A View From HETI

Molecule has closed its latest investment round. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based energy trading risk management (ETRM) software company Molecule has completed a successful series B round for an undisclosed amount, according to a July 16 release from the company.

The raise was led by Sundance Growth, a California-based software growth equity firm.

Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule, said in the release that the funding will allow the company to "double down on product innovation, grow our team, and reach even more markets."

Molecule closed a $12 million Series A round in 2021, led by Houston-based Mercury Fund, and has since seen significant growth. The company, which was founded in 2012, has expanded its customer base across the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada and South America, according to the release.

Additionally, it has launched two new modules of its software platform. Its Hive module, which debuted in 2022, enables clients to manage their energy portfolio and renewable credits together in one scalable platform. It also introduced Elektra, an add-on for the power market to its platform, which allows for complex power market trading.

"Four years ago, we committed to becoming the leading platform for energy trading," Soleja said in the release. "Today, our customers are managing complex power and renewable portfolios across multiple jurisdictions, all within Molecule.”

Molecule is also known for its data-as-a-lake platform, Bigbang, which enables energy ETRM and commodities trading and risk management (CTRM) customers to automatically import trade data from Molecule and then merge it with various sources to conduct queries and analysis.

“Molecule is doing something very few companies in energy tech have done: combining mission-critical depth with cloud-native, scalable technology,” Christian Stewart, Sundance Growth managing director, added in the statement. “Sameer and his team have built a platform that’s not only powerful, but user-friendly—a rare combination in enterprise software. We’re thrilled to partner with Molecule as they continue to grow and transform the energy trading and risk management market.”

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