UC MBA Team Wins Second Place and $5K at Duke Energy Competition

Three MBA students won second place — and $5,000 — in the Duke Energy Inter-University Green Button Case Competition on April 12 at Miami University.

Known as the Smart Team, members Jioanna Polychroniou, Amy Cattrell and Tiffany Abend created a new product for Duke Energy to implement the

Green Button

in an innovative and effective way.  

The Green Button is a national initiative for utility customers to have easy access to their electricity usage information so that they will reduce their energy usage.

The Smart Team integrated a Smart Green Button Mobile App and a Smart Stat (Thermostat) with the Smart Grid and the Smart Web. The proposal enabled consumers to monitor and control their energy consumption in “real time.” The Smart Team created a proposal that projected a potential savings of approximately 1 billion kilowatts by 2018.

The six-month competition began in October with student teams from Indiana University, awarded first place; University of Cincinnati, second place; and Miami University, third place.    

Three UC teams competed and progressed through stage two of the three-stage competition. The two runner-up teams from UC included Nathan Bauer, Cavin DeJordy, Shaun Digan, Jia Liu, Monika Sugimoto, Partha Tripathy, Shayla Woods, Yichen Xu and Yingdong Zhang.