Hannah Herbst is a fourteen year old girl who just developed a new way to harvest energy. Her design is called BEACON, which is a small device that gets energy from the tides of the ocean. The device works like this; the BEACON is placed in the ocean, and as it sits there, water flows down a tube into a turbine, which turns to create energy. Her invention won her 25,000 dollars.
Perhaps even more incredible than Hannah’s device is how she got her idea. She was reading a letter from her 9 year old pen pal in Africa who said that she does not have light bulbs or access to fresh water. This letter was what convinced Hannah to work on an idea to solve an energy problem. Here we see the classic entrepreneurial formula, where Hannah saw a pain, and created a device to eliminate that pain. Since she did this successfully, Hannah helped third world countries and earned money in the process.
It’s really cool to see such a young person think intuitively and come up with a solution to a problem, with the desire to help third-world nations. This is a cool device, and it’s impressive that a 14-year-old came up with it!
I find it incredible that Hannah was able to be such an amazing innovator at such a young age. She really is the perfect example of an entrepreneur who found a problem/pain and worked to find the solution. It is inspiring that such a young girl can make such a big impact on people’s lives.