Carnegie Mellon University

Hamerschlag Hall

March 05, 2020

CMU Team Ranks Top 10 in the ARPA-E Grid Optimization Competition

A team comprised of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Colorado Boulder has placed in the top 10 in all divisions of the ARPA-E Grid Optimization (GO) Competition. The competition results were announced by the Secretary of Energy. The team developed a lightweight optimization algorithm that could optimize power generation settings across large power networks while adhering to physical grid constraints. The Department of Energy's ARPA-E will financially support extending the novel large-scale optimization algorithms developed in this work to build a Grid Optimization platform. This platform, named Grid ARMOR (Grid Analytics, Rapid Modeling, and Optimization Routines), will enable solving national scale power system security and optimization problems. The “Tartan Buffs” team (named after Carnegie Mellon University's nickname and CU Boulder's mascot) includes Javad Mohammadi and Soummya Kar from Carnegie Mellon University, alumna Kyri Baker, and Mohammad hafez Bazrafshan from CU Boulder. The GO Competition is a year-long competition aimed at overhauling and modernizing grid software structured as multiple challenges. The competition incentivizes entrepreneurial efforts to help the grid operate more efficiently and securely. The algorithms and software solutions submitted to the GO Competition supplement ARPA-E efforts to break down barriers to empower widespread, fast adoption of emerging grid technologies with the goal of saving billions of dollars in the energy sector.