Energy Department Awards Prizes to Transform the Electric Grid, Give U.S. Utilities New Analytic Tools

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity (OE) and Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) today announced 11 of the newest winners of the inaugural $2.15 million American-Made Digitizing Utilities Prize. New tools and data analytics are needed in the power sector to cope with the vast amounts of data generated on the grid, and the new demands on the system from electrification and renewable integration. Cutting edge tools that utilize digital information will help utilities manage data and costs more effectively and identify when resilience and reliability issues happen in real time to inform responsive, cybersecure decision-making.  

This prize, which has two phases, connects utilities with interdisciplinary teams of software developers and data experts to transform energy sector digital systems through data analytics, processing, quality assurance, storage, and deletion. The prize goal is to mitigate reliability, resilience, and security risks to U.S. critical infrastructure to improve grid operations and accelerate technology integration.  

In Round 2 of this prize, nine winning teams from Phase 1 will receive $75,000 each in cash prizes for their work in the Utility Digitization/Data Challenge track (Track 1). Round 2 of this prize was launched with an additional interest in problems and solutions around cybersecurity, including mitigating the most significant cybersecurity threats and risks to U.S. critical infrastructure. Two selected teams were awarded $175,000 in cash prizes each for their proposed solutions toward the Utility Cybersecurity Challenge track (Track 2). 

“For the electricity sector to fully utilize the data it is creating, it must undergo a massive transformation in how it manages data quality, storage, and processing,” said Sandra Jenkins, Grid Controls Division director for the Office of Electricity “We’re confident that the teams moving on to Phase 2 of this prize have strong, outside-the-box solutions to transform power utilities’ data into actionable and reliable information while staying on pace with ever-evolving cyber threats.”   

Track 1: The Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2 Phase 1 winners are: 

ChainSCADA, ChainSCADA: Blockchain Integration with DNP3

Utility Partner: Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant

This team will integrate blockchain-based PKI infrastructure to enhance security and trustworthiness of DNP3 communications, as well as streamline operations, improve regulatory compliance, and mitigate cybersecurity risks. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

Enterprise Graph DB Team, Enterprise GraphDB to Better Data QA & Analytics

Utility Partner: Alabama Power Company

Project Partner: E Source

This team will establish a cloud-based analytics “storefront” (using CosmosDB) to query a comprehensive, analytics-ready graph database that is powered via automated data validation pipelines from enterprise data sources. E Source will leverage the storefront for preliminary analytics use cases that have been identified. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

Grid Elevated, MIDAAS Platform

Utility Partner: Heber Light & Power

Project Partner: Grid Elevated

This team is developing the Multi-Source Data Acquisition, Analytics, Sharing, and Security (MIDAAS) Platform, a toolkit of secure data analytic modules built upon Grid Elevated’s data acquisition solution. The MIDAAS Platform provides the infrastructure to translate large amounts of data recently enabled by the energy transition to meaningful information to impact decision-making. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

NC Storm-Based Outage Prediction, NC Storm-Based Outage Prediction

Utility Partner: North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives (NCEC) 

Project Partner: North Carolina State University 

This team aims to develop a predictive analytics tool to forecast storm-based outages in advance of weather phenomena to aid in making staffing and supply decisions. They will work to create software that NCEC and other cooperatives can use to provide real-time estimates on the likelihood of storm-based outages with a three and five-day lead time. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

RPG Lab, EV Load-Accelerated Cable Failure and Replacement

Utility Partner: CenterPoint Energy (CNP)

Project Partner: University of Houston

This team plans to develop a data-driven proactive cable replacement method, aiming to address CNP’s concern on accelerated cable degradation and failure due to fast-growing EVs. Particularly, they will focus on projecting EV adoption rate and estimate future load profiles, as well as predicting cable remaining useful life (RUL) and estimating when the cable would fail and must be replaced. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

Team Climformatics, Proactive Climate Risk Mitigation for Utilities

Utility Partner: Xcel Energy

Project Partner: Climformatics, Inc. 

This team aims to build an advanced software application that serves as a decision support tool for utilities to evaluate and mitigate the climate risks threatening the utility assets and user communities. This tool will provide actionable analytics for extreme weather events that occur up to a year in advance. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

Team Plentiful, Pre-Computed DERs and Pre-Approved Interconnection

Utility Partner: Portland General Electric (PGE)

Project Partners: Forth, Qmerit, Resilient Edge, Charli Charging, City of Tigard

This team plans to streamline installation and interconnection permitting processes by creating more holistic relationships between developers and utilities. Under this system, PGE will be able to pre-approve sites for interconnection based on pre-computed levels of DER

deployment on those sites. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

Team Simple Thread, Graph the Grid: Modern Hosting Capacity Analysis

Utility Partner: Dominion

Project Partners: Simple Thread, Right Analytics

This team aims to speed up the hosting capacity analysis and visualization process to free up engineers for higher order work for Dominion Energy and their stakeholders. They plan to leverage previously built software products within Dominion in partnership with Simple Thread to accelerate the process of further automating and hosting analysis to comply with FERC Order 2023. Watch an overview of their proposed solution. 

UtilityAPI, Standardizing Vendor Connectivity to Utilities

Utility Partner: Silicon Valley Clean Energy

Project Partner: LF Energy

This team plans to collaborate with technology companies and utilities to develop new standards that streamline third-party vendor registration and connectivity with utilities. Watch an overview of their solution. 

Newest Winners

Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge Phase 1 Winners:

Fend Incorporated, Unleash Data and Physically Block Cyberattacks

Utility Partner: Matanuska Electric Association, Inc (MEA)

Project Partner: Fend Incorporated

This team aims to expand the number and types of equipment across MEA’s infrastructure to be monitored by Fend’s data diode technology, as well as integrate this data into alerting platforms that make use of predictive analytics to help MEA spot problems before they occur. Watch an overview of their solution. 

LATEOS, GRID-CARE

Utility Partner: Holy Cross Energy

Project Partner: Siemens

This team aims to identify the most critical threats affecting power systems operations based on AI-tools and power system simulations, taking into direct consideration their impact on the power system operation, as quantified by key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be defined to better fit the operator’s procedures and needs. Watch an overview of their solution.

Refer to the table below for specific information about each project:

Throughout Phase 1, teams of developers worked with a utility partner to identify a data or cybersecurity challenge and propose a solution. Winning teams demonstrated a thorough understanding of solutions and ability to access relevant resources for the prize. Now in Phase 2, these 11 teams will work with utility partners for four months to develop and refine their solutions to win additional funding.  

Learn more about the Prize and follow the winners’ progress at https://www.herox.com/digitizingutilities.  

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