Palmerston Christian College student drivers rally for H2 World Final
A team of Territory students are set to steer their hydrogen powered, remote-controlled car to victory at the H2 World Final after winning silver on the national track.
Education
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After taking home the silver at a national grand prix, a team of Top End students has received a surprise invitation to race on an international track.
Palmerston Christian College students plan to steer their remote-controlled, hydrogen-powered vehicles to victory at this year’s H2 World Final after taking a second-place spot on the podium at the Aussie championship in June.
Year 10 students Ezekiel Kernick, Michael Jessup, Kayden Bourchier, Benny Sonsie-Daams, Tannum Jones-Materne and Johann de Guzman will compete in the world final from September 9-12 in Anaheim, California.
The team’s head mechanic, Mr Bourchier, said the “wildcard” opportunity came as a surprise.
Mr Bourchier said claiming silver at the Gold Coast’s Hydrogen Grand Prix usually meant teams did not get the chance to take their cars abroad.
“But we ended up getting a call saying that because of how many laps we got done, we actually beat the people that got first in other races around Australia,” he said.
“They said ‘we’ll give you the wildcard entry seeing as technically you would have beat them’.”
The winners are measured by how many laps of the course their cars complete in four hours – internationally, that time jumps to six hours.
The team is hosting a trivia fundraiser for their trip on August 10 and also have a GoFundMe.
Any additional funds raised will be given to the school to offer other students the same opportunities in the future.
Green hydrogen venture TE H2 Australia managing director Kam Ho said he was excited to see the students put the power of hydrogen to the test in their vehicles.
The company is a major sponsor of the team and the NT Power Search program.
“We have a community fund and that community fund is really targeted towards how (to) champion the next generation to ensure we provide opportunities and employment, encouraging education science, engineering, and mathematics,” Mr Ho said.
“It’s an incredibly talented group of Year 10 students who exhibit all the right characteristics of what engineering is all about.
“It’s about collaboration, it’s about commitment, it’s about ingenuity and the amount of hard work hard yardstick put into this program is inspirational.”
TE H2 is also a proponent of Middle Arm.
Chief Minister Eva Lawler said the partnership between the company and the students was a prime example of how education opened pathways to industry employment.
Ms Lawler said it was important to get Territorians working and ensuring schools were focused on developing the “workforce for the future”.
”A lot of times, that’s those broad skills around communication, decision making, the writing skills or technology skills,” she said.
“We also know in the future, hydrogen is going to happen in the world, and so to have these kids working on these projects... is so fantastic.”
It comes as TE H2 reaches a new milestone in its Middle Arm project, undertaking site design and engineering activities.
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