News

June 27, 2023

The following talks were presented at the 2023 FERC Software Conference by individuals with a GO Competition connection:

• Simulation of Wholesale Electricity Markets with Capacity Expansion and Production Cost Models to Understand Feedback between Short-Term Market Procedures and Long-Term Investment Incentives, presented by Jesse Holzer
• Integration of DER Aggregations in ISO-Scale SCUC Models, presented by Brent Eldridge; Presentation
• Energy Storage Participation Algorithm Competition (ESPA-Comp), presented by Brent Eldridge; Presentation
• Mine Production Scheduling under Time-of-Use Power Rates with Renewable Energy Sources, presented by Daniel Bienstock; Presentation

April 24, 2023

Results from Event 2 were posted today. Submissions were received from 12 teams: Argonauts (Argonne National Laboratory), Artelys_Columbia, Electric-Stampede (University of Texas at Austin), Gatorgar (University of Florida), GOT-BSI-OPF (Global Optimization Technology, Inc.), LLGoMax (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), PACE (IncSys), PGWOpt (University of Pittsburgh), quasiGrad (individual), The Blackouts (University of Tennessee - Knoxville), TIM-GO (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and YongOptimization (Mississippi State University).

December 8, 2022

In a press release, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that at least13 teams from 11 states will compete in the Grid Optimization (GO) Competition Challenge 3, which requires them to develop software management solutions to address real-world power grid conditions. The GO Competition—managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with support from Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison—echoes the Biden Administration’s commitment to create a more reliable, resilient, and secure American electricity grid.

Session MB61, October 17, 2022, 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM, Room Marriott 8 (second floor), Indianapolis Marriott Downtown, 350 West Maryland Street, Indianapolis, IN

Session Chair Richard Paul O'Neill, ARPA-E, Silver Spring, MD

1. Open-source Tools For Solving Grid Optimization Problems; Carleton Coffrin, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM (slides)

2. Convex Relaxations And Integer Rounding Heuristics For The Grid Optimization Competition; Hassan Lionel Hijazi, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM (slides)

3. Solving security-constrained ACOPF problems ; Daniel Bienstock, Columbia University, New York, NY, and Gurobi; Richard Waltz, Artelys, Los Angeles, CA (slides)

4. GO-SNIP Decomposition and Contingency Selection Strategies for GO Competition Challenge 2; Frank E. Curtis, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA; Ermin Wei, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

August 23, 2022

The S0 Sandbox dataset (50.3 MB) was released for download. It contains of 5 networks consisting of  3-, 14-, 37-, 73- and 6049-buses. There are 27 datasets, 9 for each division. Each dataset consists of a JSON file and a TXT file. The JSON file contains the data and the TXT file contains summary information about the dataset.

February 16, 2022

The Grid Optimization Competition Challenge 3 Problem Formulation has been released. ARPA-E has issued a Press Release and a Funding Opportunity Announcement (DE-FOA-0002690), Support Grants For Participation in ARPA-E Grid Optimization (GO) Competition Challenge 3. The Full Application Submission Deadline is 4/5/2022 9:30 AM ET. 

Participation in the GO Competition Challenge 3 will be open to anyone that satisfies the applicable requirements in the Rules Document, not just those awarded under ARPA-E DE-FOA-0002690.

January 3, 2022

Submissions for the Challenge 2 Monarch of the Mountain (Ch2-MoM) opened January 3, 2022, for registered teams and will remain open until October 31, 2022. See Solution Uploading for details. The Ch2-MoM Leaderboard will be updated every Wednesday.

October 4, 2021

The Challenge 2 winner announcement is on the ARPA-E Blog:  https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news-and-media/blog-posts/announcing-grid-optimization-go-competition-challenge-2-winners. The agenda and slides for the Outreach Event are available at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/go-competition-challenge-2-outreach-event. $2.4 million in prizes awarded.

Tweets: ARPA-E tweet and PNNL tweet.

The Leaderboard has additional information.

August 1, 2021

Challenge 2 Trial Event 3 Leaderboard results have been posted.

June 22, 2021

The 2021 FERC Technical Conference on Increasing Market and Planning Efficiency through Improved Software took place virtually June 22-24, 2021. Talks of interest included

• HIPPO Concurrent Optimizer – Enhanced Simultaneous Feasibility Test (SFT) and Migration to Private Cloud, presented by Jesse Holzer; Presentation
• Pricing in Dynamic ISO Markets with Unit Commitment, presented by Richard O'Neill; Presentation
• Efficient Prices under Uncertainty and Non-Convexity, presented by Brent Eldridge; Presentation

January 8, 2021

Challenge 2 Trial 1 Event Leaderboard results have been posted and the synthetic datasets published.

The set consits of 11 synthetic networks composed of 63 scenarios. The 4 industry datasets, composed of 20 scenarios, will not be made publicly available.

November 2, 2020

The Timeline document was updated. Teams wishing to participate in Challenge 2 Trial 1 must have their Registration Documents approved by ARPA-E by December 1, 2020.

August 17, 2020

Twelve network models comprising 34 scenario datasets are now available for testing in the Challenge 2 Sandbox that is open to Challenge 2 registered Teams. 

Challenge 1 teams must reregister for Challenge 2.

June 25, 2020

Stehen Elbert and Hans Mittelmann presented a talk entitled Analysis of GO Competition Challenge 1 Final Event Problem Difficulty at the 2020 FERC Technical Conference regarding Increasing Market and Planning Efficiency and Enhancing Resilience through Improved Software.

February 18, 2020

A meeting was held at the Renaissance New Orleans Arts Warehouse District Hotel to introduce the winners of the GO Competition Challenge 1. The agenda included talks by Lane Genatowski, Director of ARPA-E, Key Industry Speakers, and a Panel discussion with selected entrant teams: LLNL, Lehigh, Georgia Tech and CU-Boulder. 

November 25, 2019

Richard O'Neill took over as the ARPA-E Program Director of the Grid Optimization (GO) Competition today. He served as the Chief Economic Advisor at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) before coming to ARPA-E.

June 27, 2019

GO Competition related talks at the 2019 FERC Technical Conference regarding Increasing Real-Time and Day-Ahead Market Efficiency and Planning Efficiency and Enhancing Resilience through Improved Software held at the FERC Building in Washington, DC.

• Fast Evaluation of Security Constraints in a Security Constrained Unit Commitment Algorithm, presented by Jesse Holzer; Presentation
• HIPPO: A Concurrent Optimizer for Solving Day-ahead Security Constrained Unit Commitment Problem, presented by Feng Pan; Presentation
• The ARPA-E Grid Optimization (GO) Competition: Challenge 1 and Beyond, presented by Kory Hedman; Presentation
• Performance-based Energy Resource Feedback, Optimization, and Risk Management: PERFORM, presented by Kory Hedman; Presentation

February 4, 2019

A webinar with the topic "Challenge 1 Overview and Registration" was held at 12:00 pm ET. The webinar recording is available on YouTube. The webinar slides are available for download. Additional information may be found on the Registration page.