A Whakatane home school student with an ambitious project has taken out top honours in this year's Bay of Plenty Regional Science and Technology Fair.

Wasted Watts, is the name of the winning project by Year 9 student Elizabeth Howells, which aimed to justify the need to build a new hydroelectric plant planned for the Waitaha River on the West Coast of the South Island.

In her research, Elizabeth investigated whether it was possible to save enough power from unplugging fully charged items in individual households.

She measured the power used by a number of items in her home and then carried out a survey of 100 households to determine how much electricity could be saved if all New Zealand households unplugged fully charged items.

Her conclusion showed that even with full compliance, the energy conservation would not be enough to warrant not building the new plant.

Elizabeth says has plans to study astronautical engineering.

"I want to be an astronaut. I've wanted to be one for many years, but it's only recently I've started telling people,” says Elizabeth.

'It was after we visited the Air and Space Museum in Washington last year and that made me realise I really wanted to do it and I started saying it."

As well as winning Best in Fair, Elizabeth also took out the DOC Conservation Science Award and Junior Secondary Science Award.

The runner up award went to Kieran Butler of Awakeri School for a project he called Handy Hygiene.

Runner-up Best in Fair, Kieran Butler. Credit: Tracey Burton

Kieran wanted to develop a fun way to encourage children to wash their hands for the full 20 seconds that is recommended for successful hand washing.

He altered an existing soap recipe to create a bath bomb type experience that fizzed and bubbled as children washed their hands and trialled this at day care centres.

NIWA scientist Tracey Burton, who plays a lead role in the six NIWA-sponsored fairs each year, says the Bay of Plenty entries were impressive with some truly new solutions to classic problems.

'But just as impressive was the obvious passion that was shown for the research topics,” she says.

'It's great to think that these young people are bringing critical thinking to things that are relevant to them personally and to the world around them. The standard was incredibly high.”