Digitizing Utilities Prize Results

ROUND 1 | ROUND 2

The American-Made Digitizing Utilities Prize is a multimillion-dollar competition designed to help electric utilities tackle data and digitization challenges to advance grid reliability and resiliency and mitigate risks. Browse current and past results to learn about the prize’s winning ideas.

Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2

Round 2 of the Digitizing Utilities Prize consisted of the following two tracks:

Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge

This two-track, two-phase prize is now concluded. Eleven teams were named Phase 1 winners and four teams were named Phase 2 winners. Read the official winner announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

ROUND 2: PHASE 2 WINNERS

In Phase 2: Progress, competitors developed and refined a solution to a challenge that their utility partner faced. This phase of the prize is now complete, and four teams across both tracks were named winners. The three Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge winners were each awarded a $200,000 cash prize and $75,000 national laboratory voucher from DOE’s Office of Electricity. The Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge winner was awarded $300,000 by DOE’s Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response Office.

The Progress phase opened on July 18, 2024, and closed on January 15, 2025.

Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge

Enterprise Graph DB Team

Birmingham, AL

Utility Partner: Alabama Power Company

Project Partner: E Source

Project Partner: This team is establishing 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. Project partner E Source is leveraging the storefront for preliminary analytics use cases that have been identified. Watch an overview of their proposed solution.

Grid Elevated

Salt Lake City, UT

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.

Team Simple Thread

Richmond, VA

Utility Partner: Dominion

Project Partner: Simple Thread, Right Analytics

This team is speeding up the hosting capacity analysis and visualization process to free up engineers for higher order work for utility partner Dominion Energy and their stakeholders. They are leveraging previously built software products within Dominion and in partnership with project partner Simple Thread to accelerate the process of further automating and hosting analysis to comply with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2023. Watch an overview of their proposed solution.

Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge

Fend Incorporated

Arlington, VA

Utility Partner: Matanuska Electric Association, Inc (MEA)

Project Partner: Fend Incorporated

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

ROUND 2: PHASE 1 WINNERS

TEAM (SORTED ALPHABETICALLY BY TRACK)	UTILITY PARTNER	TRACK
ChainSCADA	Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Enterprise Graph DB Team	Alabama Power Company	Track 1: Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Grid Elevated	Heber Light & Power	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
NC Storm-Based Outage Prediction	North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives (NCEC)	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
RPG Lab	CenterPoint Energy (CNP)	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Team Climformatics	Xcel Energy	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Team Plentiful	Portland General Electric (PGE)	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Team Simple Thread	Dominion	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
UtilityAPI	Silicon Valley Clean Energy	Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge
Fend Incorporated	Matanuska Electric Association, Inc (MEA)	Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge
LATEOS	Holy Cross Energy	Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge

Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 1

Round 1 of the Digitizing Utilities Prize consisted of the following three tracks:

Track 1: Load Modeling with Bonneville Power Administration
Track 2: Data Analysis Automation with Dominion Energy Track 3: Competitor-Identified Challenge
Track 3: Competitor-Identified Challenge

In Round 1, teams had the option to work with a pre-identified utility partner and data challenge in Tracks 1 and 2 or could identify their own utility partner and data challenge in Track 3. This three-track, two-phase prize is now concluded with nine Phase 1 winners and three Phase 2 winners, one of whom was named a grand prize winner. Read the official winner announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy.

ROUND 1: PHASE 2 WINNERS

ROUND 1: PHASE 1 WINNERS

TEAM (SORTED ALPHABETICALLY BY TRACK)	SUBMISSION TITLE	LOCATION	TRACK
Cadmus	The Data Wave of the Future	Arlington, VA	Track 1: Load Modeling
Grid Vision Technologies	Load Forecast Using Autoencoder and Regression	Rolla, MO	Track 1: Load Modeling
Occam.ai	Occam.ai	Seattle, WA	Track 1: Load Modeling
Automatility	Automatility	Cary, NC	Track 2: Data Analysis Automation
Red-Hawks	Toward Real-Time High-Sampling-Rate Monitoring	Chattanooga, TN	Track 2: Data Analysis Automation
ScaLaDE team	ScaLaDE (Scalable Labeling for Data Enrichment)	Princeton, NJ	Track 2: Data Analysis Automation
Electrify USA	Expedite Integration of EV in Distribution System	Riverside, CA	Track 3: Competitor-Identified Challenge
Moonshot	Leverage AMI Data with ML to Mitigate Wildfires	Gillette, WY	Track 3: Competitor-Identified Challenge
The Sun Team	Digitizing Distribution System Model Validation	Orlando, FL	Track 3: Competitor-Identified Challenge

Digitizing Utilities Prize Results

Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2

Track 1: Utility Digitization/Data Challenge

Track 2: Utility Cybersecurity Challenge

Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 1

Track 1: Load Modeling

Track 2: Data Analysis Automation

Track 3: Competitor-Identified Challenge