Activity Roundup – Winter, Part #2

March 24, 2017

Hey guys! The SEC has been up to a lot of stuff this quarter – here are the highlights:

Networking Night 2017

Each year, we bring 30+ companies to Stanford for our annual networking night. This year’s was bigger than ever before, and included non-profits, VC and finance firms, and law and policy firms as well. Leading up to it, we had a number of workshops and mini-networking events as well – check out the recap here, and photos here!

Carbon Tax Panel

Last year, a number of our projects officers decided to embark on our first major policy project. This project explored how Stanford could implement a carbon tax on campus, what the implications would be for students and departments, and the impact it would have on Carbon use on campus. The panel was a follow-up to this, where we had four Stanford professors discuss the overall project and future steps. Check out the recap here, and photos here

SEC Takes ARPA-E Summit

Our exec team attended the 2017 ARPA-E Summit in Washington, D.C. for the first time this year! The summit featured luminaries of the energy industry, including Ilan Gur from Cyclotron Road, Lynn Good of Duke Energy, Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital, and many more. We were fortunate to meet hundreds of students from around the country working on some amazing energy projects, as well as companies working on cutting-edge technology in industrial processes, hydrokinetics, nuclear fusion, and much more. Check out our recap here and photos here

SEC Takes MIT Energy Conference

Right after ARPA-E, we flew up to Boston for MIT’s Energy Conference. It was great to see our friends from the MIT Energy Club again, hear from speakers talking about changes in the utility space, and meet many new students and professionals! Check out our recap here and photos here

The Far Niente Winery’s Floatovoltaic Solar Array

Floatovoltaic: A photovoltaic array that floats on water. The Far Niente Winery in Napa built a floating solar array on one of their ponds to save energy costs. Consisting of 2200 panels, the array saves the winery $250K a year, often leaving them with a huge power surplus as well. We were very lucky to get to visit it and get a guided tour of the winery after! Check out our photos here

Singapore Power Visits Stanford

We met with strategic advisors from Singapore Power, one of the largest utilities in the world, during finals week. The SG Group are part of the Free Electron program, a global utility accelerator comprising 9 top utilities from around the world.  They seek to identify promising startups for the power industry, while all the partnering utilities involved can be the launchpads for the startups. We definitely learnt a lot about the future of Singapore’s grid and Asia’s utilities market!

New Exec Elections

We’re thrilled to announce that we have elected our new executive board members for 2017-2018! Congratulations to Wen Song, Adi Raj Jain, Robert Kasse, Raja Ramesh, Sierra Gentry, Shannon Wojcick, Daniel Corral, Isabel Goronzy, Charlie Duff, and Nathan Kong!