A team of four students from Georgia Tech developing a new electrical power grid technology with an Internet-like control architecture won the third annual ACC Clean Energy Challenge and the Department of Energy’s $100,000 grand prize. The event took place on March 26 in College Park, Md.

The team–made up of Mitch Costley, Jennifer Howard, and Marcelo Sandoval, all Ph.D. students in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and Scheller College of Business M.B.A. student Eric Crane– will now move on to represent the southeast region in the U.S. Department of Energy's National Clean Energy Business Plan Finals, which will be held June 11-12 in Washington, D.C. Costley, Howard, and Sandoval conduct research in the Advanced Computational Electricity Systems Laboratory and are advised by ECE Associate Professor Santiago Grijalva.

The ACC Clean Energy Challenge is a business plan competition encouraging students from all U.S. southeastern universities to develop business plans for new clean energy companies focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency improvements, and advanced fuels/vehicles. As part of the Obama Administration’s effort to support and empower the next generation of American clean energy entrepreneurs, the Department of Energy selected the ACC Clean Energy Challenge and five additional regional competitions in the U.S. as part of its inaugural nationwide network of student-focused clean energy business plan competitions over the next three years.