The “Power the Community” design competition aims to inspire innovative approaches to energy infrastructure in new communities by a rising generation of professionals. Our goal is to improve the quality of life for residents, promote sustainability, and advance energy access and prosperity for all.
The energy infrastructure we build today will shape our communities’ energy consumption and carbon footprint for decades. Some master-planned communities in places like Houston, Texas, have energy systems that date back to a half-century ago, which raises questions about their effectiveness and efficiency.
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Can we improve the way we build and power our communities?
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Can we avoid the need to retrofit new homes with solar panels?
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Can we take a first-principles approach to community energy infrastructure design?
By stimulating the minds of energy professionals, we hope to catalyze new approaches to energy infrastructure that will benefit communities worldwide for decades to come.
Team Eligibility
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Teams may form ad hoc and need not be officially sponsored by a university, or their university can sponsor them.
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Each team should have a team name and indicate their location, such as their university.
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Teams can decide on the number of teammates themselves.
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Team members may include undergraduate students, graduate students, and persons who are not degree candidates.
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Teams may draw on the knowledge and advice from any resources they wish. However, faculty and working professionals should not contribute to directly producing results and deliverables.
Submission Guidelines
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The community should be designed for approximately 2000 or more families.
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A typical family consists of around four people, plus or minus.
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While the community could have a full range of income and assets, the target family should be able to afford housing and living expenses based on two employed adults: one being a nurse in a large hospital and the other a high school teacher.
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Consider that a typical family may have two young children, plus or minus, who could be of different genders and who will live in the housing unit from birth through high school.
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All components of the conceptual design must be available for purchase from worldwide sourcing as of the competition submission deadline.
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The community design should consider access to food/groceries, drug, and other retail stores, manufacturing, offices, medical care, social meeting spaces, recreation, places of worship, etc. Such need not be provided within the new community, and if not, the design should consider people and supply chain flow.
Deliverables
Your design submission should include the following deliverables:
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Geolocation of your design to an actual parcel of land that can be developed into a community.
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A statement of the most important needs of the community supported by references.
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A typical housing unit design.
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A community design and layout with a focus on energy flows and infrastructure.
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Benchmarks of your choosing comparing your community versus other communities and populations in the region.
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Engineering/architectural and economic calculations and renderings of your choosing that depict and support the design and its performance.
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A “pitch video” of about 10 -12 minutes (max 15 minutes).
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All deliverables should be in formats readily viewable in the public domain and/or mass-market software (Microsoft, Google, Adobe, etc.). Submitting photos and/or videos are okay if you create a physical or virtual 3D model.
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A link can be provided to the pitch video on a publicly accessible site (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, etc.).
