DOE Office of Electricity Announces Prize Winners to Strengthen Grid Reliability and Security

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Electricity (OE) today announced 13 Phase 1 winning teams of the Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 3: Resilient Grid Innovation, advancing President Trump's Executive Order to strengthen the reliability and security of the electric grid.

Each winning team will receive $75,000 to develop data-driven tools that help utilities detect threats, prevent outages, improve grid operations, and lower costs. The effort supports President Trump's commitment to ensuring the United States has the reliable, secure, and affordable electricity needed to meet growing demand and power the American economy.

As electricity demand grows, utilities need better tools to identify and respond to grid challenges quickly and cost-effectively. The Digitizing Utilities Prize brings together utilities, data experts, and technology developers to turn existing grid data into practical solutions that improve reliability and security.

"Teaming up to tackle complex grid challenges requires bridging the gap between raw data and practical decision-making," said Assistant Secretary of the Office of Electricity Catherine Jereza. "As these teams advance to Phase 2, their work with utility partners and our National Laboratories will facilitate the transformation of grid operations and planning to speed-up the deployment of scalable solutions to strengthen grid reliability and security."

In Phase 2, prize competitors will work side by side with their energy sector partners on technology demonstrations. The goal is to develop and refine solutions to address real reliability and resilience challenges and provide solutions that can be shared across the U.S. energy sector.

The following teams will advance to Phase 2 of the competition:

• AI Power (Princeton, NJ)

  This team's solution, "forAIcasting", uses AI to enhance load forecasting, enabling utilities to use flexible resources when and where they are actually needed. 

• Reactive Technologies (New York, NY)

  This team is using high resolution grid edge sensing to reveal hidden oscillations, derisking large loads and Inverter Based Resources, and improving planning and operations. 

• Analog Garage (Boston, MA)

  This team's system will deliver accurate and timely electrical models to grid operators and planners to unlock significant cost savings. 

• OpenDrawing/City of Elba (Costa Mesa, CA)

  This team has identified hundreds of utilities in the U.S. that are still managing their grids with paper and PDF maps and plans to help convert these outdated methods to digital systems. 

• PowerOutage.com (Orlando, FL)

  This team's solution, OutageIQ, provides a unified framework for integrating outage, infrastructure, and hazard data to drive operational intelligence. 

• Gridient (Denver, CO)

  Through the CVR Intelligence Hub, this team plans to unify utility data to enable fast, physics-informed CVR, cutting timelines to weeks and unlocking 1-3% in grid savings. 

• Theta Runaways (New York, NY)

  This team has an AI-based expert system trained on Electromagnetic Transient (EMT) simulation data to holistically identify grid faults based on synchronized voltage/current phasors. 

• Moonshot (Spearfish, SD) This team will use Machine Learning to find wildfire ignition precursors hiding in Advanced Metering Infrastructure harmonic data already collected by deployed smart meters.

• GridSense@UH (Houston, TX)

  This team, UH and Entergy, proposes using two AI/ML tools for distribution grids: automated Geographic Information System(GIS) and Outage Management System (OMS) model correction and real-time open-conductor detection. 

• Team REC (Fredericksburg, VA)

  This team has identified that their energy sector partner, REC, has an issue with trees outside the right-of-way causing reliability issues. Their solution, BrilliT, will use analytics to help prevent these outages. 

• The Resilient Alabama Team (Birmingham, AL)

  This team plans to unlock secondary value from LiDAR with vegetation risk analytics enabling virtual audits, reducing inspections, and improving planning. 

• Plentiful.ai (Portland, OR)

  This team's solution involves a sensor-fusable digital twin layer that links every building in a utility's grid infrastructure, creating a single operational context. 

• The UCF Power Team (Orlando, FL)

  This team's solution is a zero-shot AI-driven decision-support platform with multimodal data to support utilities in real-time restoration from natural disasters.  For more information on the prize, please see here.

The American-Made program is your fast track to energy innovation. Powered by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), American-Made transforms innovative ideas into real energy solutions through prizes, collegiate competitions, technical assistance vouchers, and opportunities to work with a network of experts.

Learn more about OE.