The seven teams moving on to Stage 3 of the CABLE Conductor Manufacturing Prize were announced today during the American-Made Earth Day Event! The teams were each awarded $200,000 in cash and $100,000 in technical assistance vouchers after successful testing of their conductivity-enhanced materials.
In Stage 2, competitors were required to submit a lab-scale sample of their material for electrical conductivity testing, along with preliminary plans to scale up and manufacture the material. The winning teams successfully demonstrated an improvement in conductivity above each contest baseline and exhibited the affordability, manufacturability, and commercialization potential of their materials.
The winning designs and teams of Stage 2 are:
- Super Cool Conductor, Selva Research Group (Houston, Texas)
- Graphene Infused Copper Made by the Flash Method, University of Colorado at Boulder (Boulder, Colorado)
- Ultra-High Strength/Highly-Conductive Al Alloys, NanoAL Lightning Team (Ashland, Massachusetts)
- Copper-Graphene Ultra Wire, MetalKraft Technologies (Albany, Ohio)
- Conductivity-Enhanced Nanocarbon Copper Composites, Team NAECO (Peachtree City, Georgia)
- A Sapient Choice of Cables for Wind Energy, Team HyperTech (Columbus, Ohio)
- Advanced Conductor with Conductive Strength Member, TS Conductor Corporation (Huntington Beach, California).
These winning competitors will now move on to Stage 3—tentatively planned to later in 2023—during which they will manufacture a larger sample of their conductivity-enhanced materials and develop plans to commercialize their designs.
At the conclusion of the final stage, planned for spring 2024, up to four winning teams will split a total prize pool of at least $2 million.
Congratulations to our Stage 2 winners and good luck in the next stage!
– The CABLE Conductor Manufacturing Prize Administration Team
