Little Box Challenge

The Little Box Challenge was an engineering competition run by Google and the IEEE's Power Electronics Society.[1][2] The original challenge was posted on July 22, 2014 with modifications on December 16, 2014 and March 23, 2015.[3] Testing was in October 2015 at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. From the 18 finalists, CE+T Power's team called Red Electrical Devils won the $1 million prize, which was awarded to them in March 2016.[4]

The challenge was to build a power inverter that was about one tenth the size of the state-of-the-art at the time. It had to have an efficiency greater than 95 percent and handle loads of 2 kW. It also had to fit in a metal enclosure of no more than 40 cubic inches (the eponymous "little box") and withstand 100 hours of testing.[3]

The goals of the competition were lower cost solar photovoltaic power, more efficient uninterruptible power supplies, affordable microgrids, and the ability to use an electric vehicle's battery as backup power during a power outage. Google also hoped a smaller inverter could make its data centers run more efficiently.[1]

The organization of the Challenge was highly flawed, with the organizers very difficult to contact; in particular, key parts of the specification were modified within weeks of the first deadline. The selected finalists had only a few weeks to modify or redo their design for the finals in October. Also, one cannot help remark that the reception of the finalists was particularly stingy: at the end of the day the 15 finalist teams, who had flown to Denver at their own expense for the event, were handed a list of recommended Denver restaurants, and told to enjoy themselves.