The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity (OE) launched a series of prizes as part of the American-Made Challenges program, which incentivizes innovation through prizes, training, teaming, and mentoring by connecting the nation’s entrepreneurs and innovators to America’s National Labs and the private sector.
These prizes focus on transforming the Nation’s electricity delivery systems as part of the clean energy revolution. Each prize targets a critical challenge to help strengthen, transform, and improve our electricity infrastructure.
Open to Submissions
High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Prize
The HVDC Prize invites electrical and industrial engineers, computer scientists, and power electronics researchers to develop new power and energy system solutions to improve renewable distributed generation, transmission to population centers, and integration with the U.S. energy grid.
PRIZE
Total prize pool of $200,000. Up to four winners total will receive $50,000 each.
INFORMATIONAL WEBINAR
April 6, 2023, 11 a.m. PT
Webinar Registration
SUBMISSION DEADLINE
June 7, 2023, 2 p.m. PT
Prizes in Progress
Digitizing Utilities Prize
Connecting utilities with teams of software developers and data experts to transform digital systems in the energy sector. Nine winners of Phase 1 received a cash prize of $75,000.
View the Phase 1 winner announcement.
In Phase 2, these Phase 1 winning teams will have six months to work with utility partners to implement their proposal. Up to four winners of Phase 2 will receive a portion of the $425,000 total cash prize pool.
PHASE 2 SUBMISSION DEADLINE
Aug. 23, 2023, 2 p.m. PT
Completed Prizes
Energy Storage Innovations Prize
This competition invited innovators to submit nascent or emerging technology proposals for grid-scale energy storage. Total prize pool of $300,000 with up to ten winners total, including five Storage Innovations Champions who received $50,000 each.
Since the American-Made Challenges program launched in 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded close to $100 million in cash and incentives to competitors for their projects spanning topics such as solar, water, geothermal, buildings, hydrogen, energy storage, transportation, technology transitions, manufacturing, and more. This program is administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.