ELECTRI International has made several exciting changes to its annual Green Energy Challenge competition. The Challenge creates an engaging and fulfilling annual event for NECA Student Chapters across North America and their faculty advisors. This annual competition, now in its 11th year, fosters meaningful interaction between students, their community, and NECA member companies.
Teams are challenged to use their surrounding area to design an energy upgrade for a facility that provides community services to others. Teams prepare a proposal showing how their chosen facility can decrease its energy consumption by incorporating energy saving measures and distributed energy resources. The team must also create a volunteer plan of interaction with the client organization and demonstrate – in the proposal – the activity and number of hours the student team volunteered towards the mission of the organization.
For the 2019 competition, the most significant change will be the way each team entry is scored. Each team’s written proposal will be reviewed by NECA contractor members and industry allies to determine the finalist teams. The top three teams (based on written proposal scoring) will be invited to the NECA Convention in Las Vegas to give an oral presentation on their GEC proposal. The winner of the 2019 ELECTRI GEC Competition will be the team with the highest composite written proposal and oral presentation score. The written proposal score and the oral presentation score will each represent 50% of the team’s final score. The three-finalist team’s written proposal score, will be published prior to the oral presentation segment of the competition.
Student teams are also required to submit a 3-minute video that profiles the team’s project and volunteer experience. All videos will be shown at the Convention. The video presentation winner will be selected by a vote of contractors in attendance.
Deborah Halpern, ELECTRI’s Director of Operations and University Relations explains the GEC changes. “Each year, we cleared the slate for the finalist teams. As a result, the scores teams received on their written presentations were not factored into their competition score. Now, each finalist team starts with the score received for the written proposal and adds to it during the live finals. We want to emphasize not only the in-person presentations but also all of the hard work these Student Chapter teams put into developing and executing their competition project.”
The Competition Rules and Regulations for the 2019 GEC will be delivered to NECA Student Chapter Advisors by November 12. Teams must register their intent to submit a GEC proposal by March 18, 2019 and final proposals are due on April 29, 2019.
For additional information about the GEC timetable and financial awards for the winning teams, contact Laura Holmes: 301-215-4538 or laura.holmes@electri.org