Twelve Georgia Tech students were awarded $14,000 in recognition of their innovative ideas for GE Energy Service’s Smart Grid Challenge Program. The competition provided the opportunity for students to address problems related to smart grid technologies.

Six teams of Georgia Tech students participated in the challenge, tackling smart grid problems related to distribution losses, liability and demand.

Georgia Tech’s Executive Vice President for Research Steve Cross commended the students who participated in the challenge.  “This competition hit a sweet spot for one of our strategic plan initiatives -- to provide team-based, real-world research opportunities for our students. The experience that our students gain through opportunities like this will pay great dividends in the future.”

GE’s Campus Executive Eric Gebhardt and Anthony Maiella, also with GE, were on hand to announce the winners. Participants on the winning cross-functional teams represented the Schools of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Aerospace Engineering (AE) and included the following students:

•    Smart grid reliability and winning presentation (Team 2A): Ravishankar Nilakantan, ECE; Ryan Anderson, ECE; David Green, ECE; Peter Suh, AE; and Xuebei Yu, ECE.

•    Smart grid demand (Team 3B): Muhammad Umer Tariq, ECE; Anupama Keeli, ECE; Matthew John Reno, ECE; and Satya Sridevi Pogaru, AE.

•    Smart grid distribution losses (Team 1A): Fan Cai, ECE; Robert Gill, AE; and Evangelos Farantatos, ECE.