
PROJECT PITCH CHAMPIONSHIP
Vote for the winner of the Solar District Cup Class of 2023!
April 25 at 2 p.m. ET
The Solar District Cup challenges multidisciplinary collegiate student teams to design and model distributed energy systems for a campus or urban district. These systems integrate solar, storage, and other technologies across mixed-use districts, or groups of buildings served by a common electrical distribution feeder. The competition engages students in engineering, urban planning, finance, and related disciplines to reimagine how energy is generated, managed, and used in a district.
The Solar District Cup Class of 2022-2023 competes from August 2022 to April 2023. Student teams design and model optimized distributed energy systems for their assigned district use case.
On October 11, 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the 57 teams from 52 schools that will spend a full academic year developing design solutions to meet the renewable energy goals of campuses or other districts.
On January 31, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the 45 teams from 39 schools that advanced to the final stage of the competition. Read the announcement.
New Ways to Participate in the Class of 2022-2023
New to the Class of 2022-2023 are a few updates to the way in which students can participate. This year, the competition accepted collegiate team registration on a rolling basis, which means students could begin work and access learning resources on a timeline that best aligned with their academic calendar. Student teams will receive their assigned district use case and access to modeling tools on a rolling basis starting August 23, 2022. Additionally, the Solar District Cup Class of 2022-2023 will allow for one-semester or two-quarter participation in the winter/spring.
Student teams have two options for their district use cases: (1) assignment to a district use case defined by competition organizers, as has been done in all previous iterations of the Solar District Cup, or (2) a bring-your-own-district division in which students can self-select their district use case, utilizing the district’s available data on their own, with missing data synthesis support by competition organizers. All student teams choosing to bring their own district will compete in a division against other teams bringing their own districts.
Class of 2023 Finalist Schools
Alfred State College of Technology
Alfred University
Appalachian State University
Arizona State University
Boise State University
Carnegie Mellon University
Clark Atlanta University
Drexel University
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Hofstra University
Illinois State University
Indian Hills Community College
Iowa State University of Science and Technology
Kankakee Community College
Kansas State University
Macalester College
Manhattan College
Miami University
Monterey Peninsula College
North Carolina State University
Northeastern University
Penn State Hazleton
San Antonio College
Texas A&M University
Texas Tech University
The George Washington University
The State University of New York Morrisville
The University of Arizona
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University of Colorado Boulder
University of California, Riverside
University of Houston
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota Duluth
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus
West Texas A&M University
Timeline
Timeline is subject to change.
- June 29, 2022 – Launch of 2022-2023 competition
- June 29, 2022 – Competition registration opened
- August 25, 2022 – Informational webinar
- August 26, 2022 – Rules published
- October 6, 2022 – Fall registration closes for full academic year participation.
- October 11, 2022 – Participating teams announced
- November 17, 2022 – Deadline for receipt of Progress Deliverable Package from participating teams
- December 15, 2022 – Progress Deliverable Package feedback provided
- January 13, 2023 – Informational Webinar for winter/spring participation
- January 26, 2023 – Registration closes for winter/spring participation
- January 31, 2023 – Finalist teams announced
- April 20, 2023 – Deadline for receipt of Final Deliverable Package from finalist teams
- April 30 – May 1, 2023 – Competing teams present their projects to judges and peers at the Final Competition Event
- May 1, 2023 – Winners announced
Learn More
- Visit Solar District Cup page on HeroX to follow the competition.
- Learn about previous competition cohorts.
- Subscribe to competition emails.
- Send questions about the Solar District Cup to solardistrictcup@nrel.gov.
This work is funded as part of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office FY2019-21 Lab Call through a project with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.