Following a successful Round 1 and Round 2 of this prize series, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Electricity is excited to the $2.4 million Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 3: Resilient Grid Innovation. Round 3 of this competition aims to incentivize technology development partnerships with interdisciplinary teams of software developers and data experts to transform digital systems, data analytics, and grid resource integration for the electric sector.
The electric industry sector is facing an explosion of data coming from a variety of sources. New types of sensors have been deployed with fast-streaming datasets (one such example is data from phasor measurement units), challenging utilities’ traditional methods of data acquisition, use, and storage. Meanwhile, big data analytics products and related services for the utility industry are limited; most of the available products having only modest electricity domain expertise.
Electric sector stakeholders are facing an emerging need to capitalize on large datasets, both internally generated data and externally generated data (e.g., weather data, topographic data, information related to vegetation), to improve reliability. Utilities are beginning to leverage information and communication technologies and automation techniques to create new business opportunities and manage market-driven change.
DOE invitesutilities and other energy sector partners to connect with interdisciplinary teams of software developers, data experts, and risk and decision scientists to facilitate the transformation of digital systems, data analytics, and risk-informed resource integration for electric utilities. Non-utility teams must partner with an energy sector partner in order to be eligible to compete in the prize.
These challenges can include not only using data with analytics, but also developing pipelines for processing, data quality assurance, data storage, and deletion. For this prize, an energy sector partner must be located in the United States and could include any of the following:
Rural electric cooperatives
Utilities owned by a political subdivision of a state, such as a municipally owned electric utility
Utilities owned by any agency, authority, corporation, or instrumentality of one or more political subdivisions of a state
Investor-owned electric utilities
Regional transmission operators/independent system operators
Electric aggregators
Electric wire owning and/or operating entities.
DOE intends for the solutions developed under this prize to be shared as examples with the broader energy sector community on how to solve data and/or resource integration challenges.
Prize Pools
Contest
Winners
Prizes
Phase 1 — Plan
Up to sixteen (16)
$75,000 cash prize each
Phase 2 — Progress
Up to five (5)
$150,000 cash prize each and $75,000 voucher each
Progress phase competitors are also eligible to compete in the following optional bonus prizes offered during the Progress phase:
Impact with Public Research Data Bonus Prize
Contextualized information about grid events and uncertain conditions is incredibly helpful for improving system reliability. Curated datasets with contextual labels can help catalyze the development of new grid reliability tools through new techniques, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Competitors who have demonstrations that result in contextualized grid datasets and who contribute data to public repositories of grid data are eligible to be awarded the Impact with Public Research Data Bonus Prize.
This data could be anonymized or could be a subset of the total data collected to make it suitable for public release. Submissions that include contributing data from multiple sources to existing public repositories, such as the Grid Event Signature Library (GESL) or the Open Energy Data Initiative (OEDI), are of particular interest. Data sets must not be submitted directly, but a link to the data on an open repository should be included in the bonus prize narrative. See Section 4.6.7 for additional details.
Contest
Winners
Prizes
Bonus Prize
Up to one (1)
$50,000 cash prize
Federated Grid Data Security Bonus Prize (Optional)
Competitors who demonstrate a technology that enables secure, collaborative, and privacy-preserving learning across grid systems are eligible to be awarded the Federated Grid Data Security Bonus Prize. The modern electricity system depends on analyzing vast amounts of operational data, yet utilities and vendors often cannot share this information due to privacy, regulatory, and security concerns. This prize rewards innovations that make it possible to train and improve cybersecurity or operational models across multiple organizations without exposing sensitive data, strengthening the sector’s collective ability to detect, prevent, and recover from cyber events. Energy sector partners advancing the safe use of distributed or federated analytics to enhance trust, transparency, and resilience in both operational technology and information systems are encouraged to compete.
Contest
Winners
Prizes
Bonus Prize
Up to one (1)
$50,000 cash prize
Competitor Eligibility
The competition is open only to private entities (for-profits and nonprofits); nonfederal government entities such as states, counties, tribes, and municipalities; and academic institutions.
Today the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity announced the Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 3 has been reopened for new applications. This $2.4 million prize aims to incentivize technology development partnerships among interdisciplinary teams of software developers and data experts to transform digital systems, data analytics, and grid resource integration for the electric sector.
In Phase 1, competitor teams will identify an energy sector partner and demonstrate a thorough understanding of their partner’s presented opportunity or challenge, as well as theteam’s ability to access the partner’s relevant data and resources that can be leveraged for this prize. Up to 16 teams will be awarded a cash prize of $75,000 and invited to participate in Phase 2.
Register TODAYfor an informational webinar on Wednesday, Jan. 28, covering key prize details including submission materials, competitor eligibility, and important deadlines.
Visit the Office of Electricity booth (#901) at DTECH 2026 this Feb. 2–5 in San Diego, CA, to hear more from past prize winners and network with other competitors.
Complete your submission no later than Thursday, April 9, at 5 p.m. ET.
Plus, don’t forget to follow the prize here on HeroX to receive timely reminders and updates about the competition.
Thank you for your continued interest in the Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 3. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been evaluating all funding opportunities, including prize challenges, to ensure appropriate resources are allocated efficiently, and that the Department's initiatives are in line with the statutory mission of DOE and the policies and priorities of the Administration and DOE. We appreciate your flexibility and patience during this process.
Prize administrators are pleased to inform you that after DOE's review, we are continuing Round 3 of the Digitizing Utilities Prize with a modified timeline and forthcoming rules document. Please closely review the HeroX timeline for updated deadlines. We look forward to seeing your submissions in January 2026.
In the meantime, please reach out to our team at digitizingutilitiesprize@nrel.gov if you have any questions or are an energy sector partner or utility interested in working with a prize team on a challenge or opportunity that you have identified to improve energy resource utilization, adequacy, and integration for operations and planning.
Plus, don’t forget to follow the prize on HeroX to receive important competition updates including a notification when the updated prize rules document is available.
