DOE’s Office of Electricity Announces 9 Feeder of the Future Prize Winning Teams

WASHINGTON –The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity today announced five winners and four runners-up of the $50,000 Feeder of the Future Prize, advancing President Trump’s Executive Order to strengthen the reliability and security of the electric grid.

The American-Made competition challenged teams to design advanced electric distribution system feeders that address current and future energy challenges, including variable supply and demand, on-site generation, and distributed devices, while improving energy affordability, reliability and security. Teams competed across three tracks—Rural, Suburban, and Urban—to address the varying characteristics and necessities of power delivery for all U.S. consumers. 

 “America’s electric grid must be ready to meet tomorrow’s energy demands today,” said Assistant Secretary of the Office of Electricity Katie Jereza. “The grid of the future will be built feeder by feeder, and the Feeder of the Future Prize harnesses American ingenuity to modernize distribution systems that serve our rural, suburban, and urban communities. Congratulations to the nine winning teams that are demonstrating the power of innovation with their forward-looking solutions and pathways to a more resilient energy future.”

Rapid rising electricity demand is straining existing capacity, requiring proactive and innovative energy solutions. New feeder technologies and design techniques can help not only meet the new power requirements but also improve energy sector affordability and meet President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge. The designs proposed through the Feeder of the Future Prize have the potential to improve reliability and maintenance, integrate evolving technologies, and meet the evolving cyber-physical security requirements of the next-generation power system.

Winners

The following five teams were named prize winners and will receive $8,000 in cash prizes for their submissions: 

GridForge Energy (California, Urban Track)

This team aims to unlock grid visibility and demand flexibility through distributed ledger technology using baselines and cryptographic fingerprints to prove that real, measurable changes occurred on a feeder during grid service events.

Grid Grit(South Dakota, Rural Track) 

This team’s solution involves the addition of adaptive conductors to rural single phase and three phase distribution construction, which enables instant load transfer and more efficient responses to storm-related outages.

Smart Grid Design Lab at Purdue University Northwest (Indiana, Suburban Track) 

This team’s focus is on a resilient, interconnection-aware feeder, a software-centric suburban feeder that orchestrates real-time digital-twin prediction, federated anomaly detection, and large-language-model–assisted cyber-physical remediation into a coordinated decision framework.

Power Grid Innovation Team(New York, Suburban Track) 

This team’s solution proposes a modernized suburban feeder architecture that integrates looped

topology, advanced automation, distributed optimization, and cyber-physical resilience. Its

design addresses rising challenges posed by electrification, electric vehicle adoption, data center growth, climate-driven outages, and cybersecurity threats. 

Rural Grid Vanguard– EPE Consulting (Texas, Rural Track)

This team’s solution is an innovative hierarchical co-optimization framework that integrates long-term planning with real-time operational control of battery energy storage systems.

Runners-Up

The following four teams were named prize runners-up and will receive $2,500 in cash prizes for their submissions. 

DBbun (Massachusetts, Suburban Track) 

This team’s suburban feeder concept uses segmentation and tie switches to restore most non-fault customers within 20 minutes under cyber constraints. The approach evaluates hundreds of feasible feeder variants and selects designs that consistently achieve rapid restoration and low customer interruption minutes across uncertainty.

PEEC LAB (Arizona, Urban Track)

This team’s proposed solution is a hybrid solid-state transformer that integrates modular solid-state transformer stages in parallel with an existing line-frequency transformer to create a flexible, scalable, and controllable medium-voltage/low-voltage interface for urban feeders.

Xyflow (Ohio, Suburban Track)

This team’s project proposes a software “overlay” for suburban distribution feeders that learns from historical operations data and updates continuously with real-time measurements.

United Powerer (Texas, Rural Track)

This team’s solution involves a novel concept of self-sustaining feeder-level rural power systems with local distributed generation to ensure continuous power supply.

Winning submissions will both influence future feeder deployments (green-field) and provide an upgrade path to existing distribution feeders (brown-field).

Learn more about the prize 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, 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 the Office of Electricity.