Digitizing Utilities: Round 2

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) today announced nine Phase 1 Track 1 winning teams of the Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2. The following teams will now move on to Phase 2 of the prize where they’ll continue to develop their proposed solutions. 

Soon, the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) will announce additional teams to be awarded $125,000 in cash prizes each for their proposed solutions toward the Utility Cybersecurity Challenge track (Track 2).

Track 1: Utility/Data Challenge Track Phase 1 Winners

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. 

Thank you to all teams who applied for Round 2 of the Digitizing Utilities Prize. Our judges were impressed with the applications submitted and hope each team will continue to apply for American-Made challenges in the future.

A new opportunity from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) and the Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) is making $100,000 in vouchers available to everyday innovators who could benefit from the help of national laboratories.  

The $2.1 million TCF Open Voucher Call was created to provide the public with opportunities to receive technical assistance from researchers at U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory facilities. Successful applicants will receive vouchers—valid for testing and validation, use of specialized equipment or software, simulation or modeling, consulting, or various other requests from a National Laboratory—which will ultimately allow them to advance their technologies. It aims to inspire a new generation of innovative researchers and instill a sense of shared responsibility for advancing knowledge and innovation within the scientific community.  

A select number of $100,000 vouchers will be awarded to people with big ideas for advancing clean energy, sustainability, or other key national lab-supported initiatives. The vouchers can be redeemed at one of eight national labs, which will then provide expertise and lab validation capabilities to the awardee to help them advance their concept closer to commercialization.  

Anyone interested in exploring the opportunity is encouraged to join an informational webinar on July 18 at 2 p.m. ET follow the TCF Open Voucher Call on HeroX to stay up to date on upcoming dates, deadlines, and important news. 

Hey, competitors! 

TOMORROW, May 7, is the submission deadline for Round 2 of the Digitizing Utilities Prize. The prize administrators highly recommend uploading all materials ahead of the 5 p.m. ET deadline to avoid any potential delays or technical difficulties. We will not accept late submissions. 

Resource Recap

• Read the Official Rules in their entirety (located in the Resource tab) before submitting any materials.  
• Post any final questions in the Forum tab and a prize administrator will post a public response if possible.
• The recording and slides for the March informational webinar are available as a prize refresher. 

We look forward to reviewing all of your submissions! Good luck. 

Don't forget next Tuesday, May 7, is the deadline to submit your Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2 application. The prize administrators highly recommend uploading all materials ahead of the 5 p.m. ET deadline to avoid any potential delays or technical difficulties. 

Resource Reminder

• Curious about submission materials? Read the Official Rules in the Resource tab.  
• Need an answer to a quick question? Post your question in the Forum tab and a prize administrator will post a public response. 
• Looking for a refresher on important prize details? The recording and slides for the March informational webinar are posted in the Resources tab. 

We look forward to seeing your submissions soon! 

Competitors,

Don’t forget, the submission deadline for Round 2 of the Digitizing Utilities Prize is Tuesday, May 7 by 5 p.m. ET. The prize administrators highly recommend uploading your submission before 5 p.m. to avoid any technical delays. 

Informational Webinar Recording

The recording and slides for the March informational webinar are now posted in the Resources tab. Watch the recording to learn more about submission details, key dates and deadlines, and teaming.

Official Rules April Mod

A modification to the Official Rules as been posted in the Resources tab. Please ensure your team has read this document in its entirety before uploading any submission materials. 

Questions?

If you have a question that isn’t addressed in the informational webinar recording or within the Official Rules, we suggest posting in the Forum tab where other competitors and prize administrators can post answers. 

We look forward to seeing your submissions soon!