Austin Energy Announces National Research Competition

Contest Calls for Solutions for Integrating Urban Forests
and Utility Infrastructure

The City of Austin is an established environmental community that values its green spaces as critical to the area's acclaimed quality of life. The community also demands clean, affordable, reliable energy and excellent customer service from Austin Energy, the nation's 10th largest community-owned electric utility.

Nationally recognized as an excellent place to live and work, Austin's continual growth — it is now the nation's 16th largest City — makes protecting green space increasingly important. Therefore, Austin is working to protect its trees while it increases the density of development in an effort to combat sprawl.

Trees and utility infrastructure are already often in conflict with each other, and denser development can accentuate the conflict. In an effort to develop innovative and efficient methods for the urban forest and utility structures to coexist, the City of Austin is introducing a national competition aimed primarily at College and University Schools of Architecture with the goal of a system-wide solution.

Description of the Competition
The City of Austin, and its municipally owned utility, Austin Energy, is interested in finding the most innovative, cost-effective way to integrate utility lines in urban areas, promote the planting of street trees, and protect existing mature urban trees while maintaining excellent electrical system reliability.

With this in mind, the City is initiating a nationwide competition, limited to Colleges and Universities, with the goal of securing a system approach to integrating utility lines with urban trees. The winning team's approach is expected to be implemented as a pilot project in Austin. Competing Colleges and Universities are expected to put together cross-discipline teams with expertise in:

	Electrical Engineering
	Landscape Architecture
	Civil Engineering
	Urban Planning

Austin Energy will present the top four competing teams with cash awards. The winning team whose approach is selected will receive $250,000. The second place team will receive $30,000 and two semifinalists will each receive $10,000. A jury composed of representatives from Austin Energy, other utilities, members of Austin’s Citizen Task Forces, and representatives from national urban planning organizations will determine the award-winning teams.

The winning team will be the one that best achieves a cost effective system that includes advances in the following:

	Integrating utility lines with trees in developed urban areas, either through placing lines underground, using new materials for electric conductivity, or other innovative system approaches
	Promoting electric system reliability
	Promoting improved streetscapes and public spaces
	Promoting and enabling planting of street trees and urban forest
	Protecting existing mature urban forest
	Cost effectively addressing other utility lines (i.e., phone, cable, etc)
	Configuring the utility line service area to provide secure space for all utilities

Proposal Methods
The competition presupposes no preferred approach—i.e., the competition does not establish a preference for either underground systems or above-ground systems. Teams may address the benefits and drawbacks of either an underground or above-ground system, or may take an entirely new systems approach.

Under current known practices and technologies, underground systems provide advantages in many instances for planting street trees, locating multi-story buildings up to the sidewalk and street, improving streetscapes and potentially improving reliability. Underground systems also have much higher costs and are more difficult to repair than above-ground systems.

Under current known practices and technologies, above-ground systems have a relatively low cost, and identifying and repairing outages is quicker and cheaper. Above-ground systems also require substantial clearance from tree limbs and from buildings, require ongoing costly tree pruning and tree removal services, are more susceptible to outages in storms and negatively impact the aesthetics of streetscapes and public spaces.

Judging Criteria
	Overall cost effective approach	30%
	System promotes reliability	20%
	System promotes, protects, and enables tree planting and urban forest management	30%
	Cost effectively provides for utilities other than electric	20%

Deliverables
	Report (5 copies), including executive summary with chapters addressing each of the judging criteria; with corresponding PowerPoint presentation
	Top entries may need to be available to make their presentation via video teleconference to the jury in Austin, Texas.

For additional background information and questions please contact:

Ester Matthews
512-322-6041
512-322-6037 fax

Austan Librach
512-322-6351