User:Myrnaraej



The SMART Competition (www.smartcompetition.org) is a global high-school student team-based education program in the form of an annual competition. The competition provides hands-on learning experience and practical investigation of sustainability, intelligent building design, renewable technology, and the smart grid. It also provides STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) curricula as well as real-life advanced building design techniques1 and building design with animation software2 skills development. The SMART Competition is based in the United States and available to students worldwide.

Competition Structure

 * All students must be of high school age. High school is defined as 9-12thgrades in the USA and defined as pre-university level programs internationally.
 * Student competition takes place between October registration and completion of the finals in March.
 * Student teams are comprised of 3 or 4 members.
 * Teams can originate from any type of school: public private home-based, parochial, or charter. They can also be from educational programs such as science clubs and special interest programs. There is no regard or bias of gender, race, socio-economic status, or academic performance levels for the students or schools.
 * Academic leaders serve as sponsors for the student teams and are responsible for the activities of the teams.

Competition Activities
The student teams are given access to building design software tools and instructions, along with clean energy learning and reference materials. The software has a pre-built virtual high school campus with a purposefully badly designed gym for the students to improve.


 * 1) Using the provided building design software tools, the teams conduct energy usage and loading analysis to identify campus building and design improvement opportunities.
 * 2) The teams redesign the gymnasium, using virtual sustainable materials, to improve energy efficiency and power use.  Teams can implement changes to all roof, wall, door and window materials, redesign lighting and air conditioning systems, select trees and landscape options, and change the building orientation.
 * 3) The teams add power-generating systems to the campus using renewable technologies.  Power systems can be wind, solar, water, biomass, glycol-based, etc.
 * 4) The team will need to determine how to insert surplus gym energy into the surrounding neighborhood’s smart grid.

Competition Deliverables
Teams will deliver specific competition items for scoring by a team of judges:


 * Computer generated fly-around animation of their campus and gymnasium
 * Drone generated video of their existing campus to provide baseline information about suggested changes to existing facilities
 * A design, innovation and impact report that shows how the team arrived at their decisions and what choices they made while creating their building designs
 * A team presentation to competition judges
 * Actionable recommendations to local leadership that will improve energy use or decrease reliance on externally provided power by their school or facility

Charity Status

 * The SMART Competition is a US-chartered non-profit, 501c3 charity.  SMART is funded through the SMART Education Foundation, Inc.


 * Software and software support to the student teams is provided by Bentley Systems via their philanthropy program. (http://www.bentley.com)


 * Azure Education provides educational materials for use by the student teams. Azure Education is a 501c3 charity, led by sustainable engineering consultants from Clean Energy Consulting and Education. (http://www.cecande.com)