The ASU Energy Hackathon is a prototype-first, interdisciplinary hackathon focused on building practical solutions for the energy transition.

Hosted by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) ASU Student Chapter at Arizona State University, the event brings together students from engineering, computer science, business, policy, design, and related fields to solve real challenges across power systems, electrification, energy software, hardware, and climate technology.

Date: April 18–19
Location: ASU Tempe Campus, EDC 117
Host: AEE ASU Student Chapter

Organizing Partners: AEE, IEEE, ASME
Partner Clubs in Discussion: DevHacks, Robotics, Claude AI

This track features two separate sponsor-led challenges focused on artificial intelligence applications for modern energy systems.

APS Challenge
Build an AI solution for predictive and spatially aware grid applications. Example directions include load forecasting, grid behavior modeling, outage risk, congestion analysis, and distributed energy resource coordination.

Collide.io Challenge
Build an AI-driven solution for energy systems using machine learning, forecasting, optimization, or decision support. This challenge is designed for teams interested in grid intelligence, advanced analytics, and practical energy applications of AI.

Sponsored by OpenVPP

This track focuses on software products and digital systems for energy. The featured OpenVPP challenge asks teams to design an intelligent orchestration system for electric vehicles as flexible grid assets and distributed inference infrastructure.

Teams will determine when vehicles should charge, discharge through vehicle-to-grid services, remain idle, or support inference workloads while respecting mobility needs and uncertainty. This track is ideal for students building dashboards, decision tools, APIs, workflow platforms, and optimization software for energy systems.

Partner Club: IEEE

This track focuses on practical hardware systems that can sense, interpret, and respond to real energy conditions. Teams will build working prototypes involving embedded systems, controls, sensing, battery diagnostics, solar-powered electronics, and visible physical outputs.

Current anchor challenge directions include:

Battery Lie Detector
Build a device that measures the true usable capacity and state of health of a lithium-ion cell instead of relying only on the labeled rating.

Energy Debt Tracker
Build a solar-powered ESP32-based system that tracks energy harvested versus energy consumed and adapts its behavior across surplus, balanced, and deficit operating states.

Sponsored by BKPK

This track focuses on power electronics, battery systems, and high-voltage direct current infrastructure. The BKPK challenge asks teams to design a high-efficiency bidirectional DC-DC converter that connects a high-voltage battery system to an 800 V DC data center bus.

Teams are expected to develop a simulation-based design that shows efficiency, loss breakdown, operating behavior, and engineering reasoning across charging and discharging conditions.

Registration opens: March 14
Hackathon begins: April 18, 10:00 AM MST
Project submissions close: April 19, 10:00 AM MST
Winners announced: April 19, 3:00 PM MST

• Technical Execution
  How well the team built and implemented the solution. Judges should look at functionality, system quality, prototype completeness, and the level of technical difficulty.
• Problem Relevance
  How clearly the project addresses an important real-world challenge in energy, buildings, infrastructure, electrification, or climate technology. Strong projects should solve a meaningful problem, not just showcase technology.
• Quality of Prototype
  How tangible and demonstrable the build is. Strong projects should go beyond slides or concepts and show a working prototype, meaningful mockup, tested hardware setup, or functional workflow.
• Interdisciplinary Integration
  How effectively the team combines different skill sets such as engineering, software, hardware, AI, design, business, or policy. Strong teams often connect technical depth with practical context.
• Energy Sector Insight
  How well the team understands the energy-specific context of the problem. Judges should reward projects that reflect awareness of operational constraints, industry realities, user needs, or deployment environments.