The research and development team led by Prof. Nanpeng Yu, postdoctoral researcher (Dr. Wenyu Wang) and PhD student (Zuzhao Ye) won the American-Made Digitizing Utilities Grand Prize with $300,000 cash prize from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Electricity. The U.S. DOE’s Digitizing Utilities Prize aims at connecting utilities with teams of data experts to transform digital systems in the energy sector through data analytics. The team led by Prof. Yu, named Electrify USA, worked closely with Exelon, a Fortune 250 company and the U.S.’s largest utility company, serving more than 10 million customers through six fully regulated transmission and distribution utilities. The UCR team developed an integrated and data-driven planning platform to accelerate the integration of electric vehicles in power distribution systems. The UCR team received the only Grand Prize from the fierce competition that attracted 39 teams and 198 innovators from the U.S.

The official announcement from the DOE’s Office of Electricity can be accessed via the link below.

https://www.energy.gov/oe/articles/energy-departments-american-made-digitizing-utilities-prize-awards-425000-phase-2