The City of Fort Collins has joined with Innosphere, the community’s business incubator, and CSU to host a business contest around understanding and quantifying actual electric vehicle charging patterns in Fort Collins.
The EV challenge opens July 20. Finalists in the competition are scheduled to present at Colorado State University’s 21st Century Energy Transition Symposium, Sept. 28-29.
“We are excited about this opportunity to work with the City of Fort Collins and the Rocky Mountain Innosphere on this challenge,” said Maury Dobbie, assistant director of CSU’s Center for the New Energy Economy and symposium chair. “Our 6th annual symposium is all about finding solutions related to the energy transition of our country, and one of the ways we’re doing that is through collaboration with industry and government.”
Innovate Fort Collins
The contest, called “Innovate Fort Collins,” is designed to help innovators bring relevant technologies to market that are going to help the community meet its Climate Action Plan goals. The city wants the community’s help identifying pilot projects or innovations that will help Fort Collins reduce carbon emissions 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The goals, which were set by City Council in 2015, also aim to achieve an 80 percent reduction by 2030 with a desire to be carbon neutral by 2050.
“Technology innovation is absolutely needed to meet the goals laid out in the City of Fort Collins Climate Action Plan,” said Mike Freeman, Innosphere CEO. “With Fort Collins setting out to be a leader in this space, it’s important to have an incubator organization fostering technology startups that have the potential to build new pathways towards a more sustainable future.”
The Innovate Fort Collins competition would help quantify the scheduling, location and electric loads of electric vehicles currently running on the Fort Collins grid distribution system. City officials have modeled electric vehicle use with the assumption that charging is occurring mostly at home at 5 p.m., but there is emerging evidence that actual charging patterns are much more diverse.
To reach the 2020 goals, about 50 percent of the reduced carbon emissions outlined in the Climate Action Plan would need to come from electric sources.
Sign up to compete
To sign up for the competition starting July 20, go to www.innosphere.org. For more information about the City’s Climate Action Plan, go to www.fcgov.com/climateaction.
Registration is now open for the CSU 21st Century Energy Transition Symposium at http://naturalgas.colostate.edu/symposium-2016/.
