FAST Prize Innovators,

Tune in to an upcoming webinar hosted by an American-Made Network Power Connector on Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 11am ET. More details and registration info is below.

CMU SCOTT INSTITUTE HOSTING IP WEBINAR

Power Connector the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting an informational webinar on intellectual property (IP) and patent processes for innovators and startups. The webinar, From Idea to Invention to Intellectual Property: What Startups and Innovators Need to Know, is on Thursday, June 11, 2020, at 11 a.m. ET.

Tune in to hear about IP best practices from legal experts at the national law firm and Network member Babst Calland, as well as Scott Institute entrepreneur Jay Whitacre. This webinar is free and will also have a Q&A session. 

Register here to join: 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/from-idea-to-invention-to-intellectual-property-registration-105972065300?fbclid=IwAR3RPYATkliwA0b269eejSTMOb2hKKoP8IeFH_7ZO-J5Wf2zrDy-Du7Zl1M

Congratulations to the four grand prize winners, who received up to $550,000 in vouchers and cash prizes. They are:

1. Reducing PSH Excavation Duration, Cost, & Risk – Tracy Livingston and Thomas Conroy, Team Livingston, combined excavation equipment modifications and process optimizations to achieve up to 50% reduction in excavation timelines.
2. Use of Modern TBMs for Underground Pumped Storage – Doug Spaulding, Nelson Energy and Golder Associates, proposed use of tunnel boring machines for underground excavation, which can decrease excavation time by 50% and reduce costs.
3. Accelerating PSH Construction with Steel Dams – Gordon Wittmeyer, Southwest Research Institute, presented a modular steel concept for dams that cuts costs by one-third and cuts construction schedules in half.
4. Modular Closed-Loop Scalable Pump Storage Hydro – Tom Eldredge and Hector Medina, Liberty University, presented a modular closed-loop, scalable PSH system with a capacity range of 1–10 megawatt, adaptable to sites without natural bodies of water.

Winners of the FAST Prize were announced yesterday at the HydroVision conference in Portland, OR. We’d like to congratulate our nine winners and thank everyone who submitted to the contest! The judges had a very difficult task of selecting winners from the extremely well qualified and innovative pool of submissions that we received. Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the first stage of the prize! We invite everyone to continue to follow the prize and participate on the HeroX forums.  

You can see the winners for yourself and learn more about the announcement in the NREL Press Release.

Thank you for your continued patience as we choose our finalists. We’re taking a bit more time to announce the finalists publicly but expect a notice on July 23. In the meantime, please reach out with any questions.

-The FAST Prize Team