Contest Kickoff!
The PTC high school contest kicks off each year on the first Friday of October, taking place virtually over Zoom. An email invitation providing the the Zoom Kickoff meeting link will be sent to all registered teacher sponsors. A recording of the Kickoff will be posted and distributed, for any students or teachers who were unable to attend the virtual meeting.
Current Contest Timeline
Contest Goal
The Powering the Community: High School Artificial Intelligence (AI) Design Contest challenges students to apply design thinking practices that support artificial intelligence design. Sponsored by Duke Energy, the high school contest focuses on the need for smart grids and microgrid systems in Florida to mitigate the impact of power outages during storms. Teams of 3–4 high school students work together throughout the 6–week contest to design a reimagined smart smart microgrid system that can support power distribution among key users in their unique communities.
Contest Overview
Contest procedures guide competing student teams through a data-driven design process to survey power users in their community and plan the smart microgrid system. At the end of the contest, top-placing teams propose their design product to a panel of judges from Duke Energy in the PTC Design Showcase at the University, where the judges award third, second, and first place.
The entire grid design process, facilitated through various contest objectives and deliverables, is divided into six contest activities that student teams must complete. The top-two placing teams from each participating school complete the seventh contest activity when they propose their final design in the PTC Design Showcase.
Student design teams first familiarize themselves with power distribution using traditional vs. smart grids, learning how both systems typically respond to an emergency event such as a power outage from a natural disaster. Then teams assess their communities using mapping software to identify key categories of users and establish restoration priorities. Teams then use a Python-driven Jupyter Notebook to sample and graph representative energy data sets to visualize the power demands of different users, proceeding to calculate and graph the total power demand on their community’s grid across the different key user categories their team selected. Teams proceed to devise a strategy to “train” a theoretical AI model to restore power in the event of an outage by creating data “snapshots” of the power restoration across users at different time points, using a Microsoft Excel dashboard. Finally, teams reimagine their community’s power grid by redesigning their mapped network into a system of microgrids to which users of different priorities are assigned. After completing the design process, students draft an executive summary and proposal presentation to justify their design strategy and propose how they would use their AI model to improve power restoration.
Contest Platform
Prior to the PTC Design Showcase at the University of Florida, all contest procedures are facilitated virtually through the use of a centralized learning management system. Currently, participating schools can elect to participate in the contest using Microsoft Teams (preferred) or Google Drive (sufficient).
Student design teams and their mentor are added via email address to a unique channel (Microsoft Teams) or folder (Google Drive) in the PTC Contest Microsoft Team or PTC Contest Google Drive. Students are encouraged to collaborate on all contest activities by working within their team’s unique, editable Activity documents that are provided over these virtual platforms. If teams are having access issues, the Activity documents can be downloaded from the top of each activity page on this website (MS Contest Activities from the website’s navigation menu).
Contest Procedures
- Student design teams kick off the contest with Activity 1, in which they complete background reading, choose a team name, assigning each member a team role, and arranging their weekly virtual meeting with their contest mentor via Zoom of Microsoft Teams.
- Design teams proceed through Activities 1–7 to execute the design process and ultimately propose their smart microgrid system design. For support in completing the activities, design teams can message or arrange meetings with their mentor through their team channel in Microsoft Teams, or using the Mentor Communications Doc in Google Drive. The design teams must check in with their mentors (1) during the weekly scheduled virtual meeting, and (2) for a formal review of their work prior to submitting each activity.
- To submit completed activity documents, the quality engineer of the design team will follow instructions to use the submission link provided (1) at the bottom of each activity document, (2) at the top of each activity page of the website, or (3) in the navigation menu of the website (“Activity Submissions”). Submissions are collected through a Qualtrics survey that prompts submission of all necessary activity components. The quality engineer will receive a confirmation email that their activity has been submitted.
