MIT Team Wins Clean Energy Prize for Solving Solar’s Shade Problem
An MIT team, including MBA students from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, whose integrated chip restores lost power to partially shaded solar panels — achieving double the energy capture improvement of similar technologies — won top honors at the seventh annual MIT Clean Energy Prize (CEP) competition.
Equipped with a promising business plan and a snappy catchphrase — “shade happens” — Unified Solar took home both CEP grand prizes: the DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Clean Energy Prize, worth $100,000, and the NSTAR MIT Clean Energy Prize, worth $125,000.
Solar panels on residential rooftops that are partially shaded by clouds or trees sacrifice as much as 30 percent of their energy potential over a year. Unified Solar’s technology, for the first time, integrates an entire power balance circuit onto a low-cost chip that can be integrated into a solar panel to regain that lost energy. Continue reading…
MIT Sloan Students Among Semi-Finalists for the MIT Clean Energy Prize
Several teams featuring current MIT Sloan students are included among the semifinalists of the seventh annual MIT Clean Energy Prize competition. The MIT Clean Energy Prize is open to graduate and undergraduate students enrolled at least half-time at any university in the United States. It is a student-organized business plan competition where teams can submit their own clean energy or technology ideas into one of three categories: Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, or Infrastructure & Resources. Over a period of several months, the teams are mentored and critiqued by panels of venture capitalists, CEOs, lawyers, and academics.
This year, more than 60 teams from 24 universities across the United States competed in the MIT Clean Energy Prize. Following the first round of judging, 21 teams were invited to enter the semifinal round of the competition. These teams will receive mentoring, a $1,000 stipend, and access to MIT Clean Energy Prize resources such as partnerships with startup accelerators and a wide network of clean energy experts. Continue reading…
