Princeton University
Summary
Since his graduation in 2016, Princeton alumnus Angelo Campus has worked to ensure anyone needing quick and dependable access to a power source can find it in a simple configuration: a shipping container equipped with solar panels, a battery for energy storage and a backup generator.
His company, BoxPower, builds and distributes these units — what are known as containerized microgrids — and has deployed them in places like Puerto Rico, which lost electrical infrastructure in 2017 due to Hurricane Maria, and the Alaskan backcountry, where Alaska Natives live far removed from electrical power sources.
BoxPower even filled a critical need in Campus’ home state of California in 2019, when wildfires caused public utilities to shut down electrical grids for days.
“When we started this company, we didn’t know that Hurricane Maria was going to happen, we didn’t know that the California wildfires were going to happen,” said Campus, whose company is based in his hometown of Nevada City, California.
He also couldn’t foresee that a game-changing technological development was on the horizon: that Tesla would revolutionize the battery and energy storage market — a key component of solar energy systems — popularizing the idea of microgrids.
What Campus did know early on was that he had a passion for renewable energy, engineering and product design, and a strong desire to promote social and environmental good.
He learned about containerized microgrids in 2011 as a senior in high school, when he visited Princeton for a campus tour. The visit strongly influenced his decision to attend the University and to learn more about the technology involved.
As a first-year student, he joined Princeton’s Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program, which was developing a sustainable alternative to diesel generators in the wake of the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and their devastating aftermath.
“Generators were deployed [in Haiti] by government, military, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross,” Campus said. “And then there was a complete shutdown of the fuel supply chain that rendered all of those generators inoperable, causing vaccines, medical supplies, food and water filtration systems to all go down.”
Over 200,000 deaths from preventable diseases in the year following the earthquake were directly attributable to Haiti’s inability to supply power to aid workers, Campus said.
EPICS’ solution to address the problem was called “Power in a Box,” a hybrid wind-solar energy source that was portable and renewable. Campus prototyped and built several systems, which he entered in the Environmental Protection Agency’s P3 Sustainable Design Expo, winning first place and a $90,000 grant. Another system that Campus helped build was delivered to an oceanic research center in Bermuda.
“From my early time working with Power in a Box and the Princeton EPICS center, I knew this was what I wanted to do,” Campus said.
To focus his academics on his goals, Campus switched out of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to create an independent concentration called “Technological Development” that allowed him to fully realize the practical applications of containerized microgrids. He took on advisers from engineering, architecture and anthropology to help him more closely examine the technical, human and social aspects of energy systems.
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