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A new academic prize program is intended to encourage Northwest university students to consider pursuing careers in the utility industry.

The Bonneville Power Administration and Oregon BEST, a Portland-based nonprofit that aims to spur clean technology innovation, recently launched the Northwest Energy Experience. In the program, university students and faculty advisers take on research projects that address power industry challenges.

BPA and Oregon BEST each year will select eight student participants who show strong potential for utility industry careers, and give their universities $50,000 awards. The universities will dole out the money to winning students via scholarships and stipends.

Three teams of engineering and computer science students from Oregon State University, the Oregon Institute of Technology, Portland State University and Washington State University-Vancouver participated in a pilot program during the 2013-14 academic year and presented their findings earlier this month. Their projects included analysis of energy data, research into incorporation of clean energy into the power grid and research into energy systems that use different types of electricity generation.

BPA and Oregon BEST hope to see more universities and utility companies become involved, said Joel Scruggs, a spokesman for BPA’s Portland office.

“From BPA’s perspective, we want to see more talent in the pipeline,” he said. “We think it’s not kind of the boring electric power industry that it used to be.”

Each team that participates in the program must include students from multiple universities. This encourages collaboration, Scruggs said.

“These are real, technical challenges; it’s not fiction,” he said. “It could evolve into a solution that could help us make the Northwest power grid even better.”

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