The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Electricity (OE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) requested feedback on the structure of the next American-Made Challenge. The American-Made Utility Digital Transformation Prize will connect utilities with interdisciplinary teams of software developers and data experts to transform digital systems in the energy sector and data analytics for utilities.

The DOE-funded prize will be 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.

Since the American-Made Challenges prize program launched in 2018 to support U.S. entrepreneurship and innovation in clean energy, DOE has awarded about $100 million in cash and incentives to competitors in more than 30 prizes, spanning solar, water, geothermal, buildings, hydrogen, energy storage, transportation, technology transitions, manufacturing, and more.

During the American-Made Utility Digital Transformation Prize, participating utilities will provide details about obstacles or impediments while providing access to related data. The goal of this prize is for teams work directly with utilities using their data, to solve their problems.