2024 Challenge Categories
(source)
Customer and community engagement
Customers and their satisfaction lie at the core of any business. As an industry, we want to be more proactive to better serve our customers, particularly those who are vulnerable or disadvantaged, provide more personalized communications and information, and offer services and solutions targeted to individual needs. Bring us your solutions that help us create grid-interactive smart communities, enable broad community benefit, and support economic development. These solutions help our customers become more proactive and informed participants in a cleaner, more integrated, and resilient energy system, and create new lines of business for our utilities.
- Virtual Assistants, automated dispatch, rapid response and assistance for vulnerable customers
- Seamless integration and management of connected energy devices
- Price signaling or transactive energy platforms
- Advanced customization/targeted customer engagement
- Predictive behavioral and adoption analysis
- Low-and-moderate-income (LMI) & disadvantaged communities (DAC) targeted programs
Decarbonization and Sustainability
The world is on a path to decarbonize and the electric power industry is leading the charge. Since 2005, the US reduced its carbon footprint one gigaton, primarily by switching to cleaner fuels, expanding renewables, and driving efficiencies. To get the next gigaton, we need solutions to integrate and manage more low-carbon energy generation: from distributed to utility-scale solutions covering wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and low-carbon fuels; to systems that help us optimize their output. Circularity in our operations and materials also are critical. As we deploy these solutions, controls, financing, accounting systems, and materials technology options will help society better track environmental impacts and support a shift to zero carbon. Our path to deep decarbonization also includes a focus on low-carbon hydrogen technologies.
- Sector-coupling clean energy fuel programs and green hydrogen solutions
- Circulator design and new or low -carbon materials (vegetation waste, plastics, concrete, SF6 replacement etc.
- Hydrogen storage systems
- Onshore & Offshore renewables integration
- Low-carbon fuel generation, distribution & storage
- CO2 value chain solutions
- Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting solutions
- Wireless transmission technology
- HVDC, hybrid, FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission Systems) solutions
- Solutions in areas not interconnected
Electric mobility
Electrification is a key component of our decarbonization strategy, and transportation represents our biggest emitter. To get a gigaton out of transportation, we need solutions to enable low-cost, ubiquitous, and manageable charging, comprehensive fleet-as-a-service solutions, and charging infrastructure wherever we drive and park. And as adoption scales, we need the ability to manage charging and to call on vehicles to switch from energy consumer to supplier and back depending on the need.
- Charging balance-of-system cost reduction
- Low-cost charging for multi-family, underground and public parking
- Reduced grid impact for home and fast charging
- EV charger detection, grid planning and charge management
- EV fleet and fleet-as-a-service
- V2G and V2X
Electrification
Building systems and commercial/industrial processes represent significant opportunities for decarbonization. Utilities have long been active in innovations around building envelopes, device efficiencies, and demand response programs. As we add intelligence, load disaggregation and flexible load solutions, we help match energy consumption to grid availability without sacrificing comfort or performance. As these solutions become more integrated and complex, there also is a need for comprehensive Electrification-as-a-Service solutions that guide customers through the design, deployment, and operation of solutions.
- Advanced HVAC systems
- Load disaggregation, monitoring, and control
- Flexible load control solutions
- VPP and virtual battery solutions
- Standards and solutions for behind-the-meter interoperability
- Comprehensive Electrification-as-a-Service
- Industrial heat pumps
- DER/DERM control, DERM network comms
- Gas/electric hybrid energy systems, Gas heat pumps
- Wireless transmission technology
Nuclear assists
Nuclear power will play a critical role in the decarbonization of the electric generation sector. Many models show the need for both existing nuclear power plants, as well as new advanced reactors, to meet climate goals. Innovative, ancillary technologies are needed to assist existing nuclear plants in operating more efficiently and help with the cost-effectiveness of advanced nuclear reactor designs.
- Automated plant operations, digitization and modernization
- Advanced radiation protection technologies
- Nuclear fuel cycle
- Digital twins, online monitoring, and automated analysis
- Sensors and robotics for high temperatures
Predictive & Prescriptive operations
With the growth in renewables, distributed energy systems and electrification, modeling, and managing our grid is more important than ever. Digital overlays and AI/ML are fundamentally transforming the electric power system, and we seek solutions that provide more intelligent and autonomous power plants. We also seek automated, data-driven, and optimized operations, maintenance, and planning technologies for building a safer, more efficient, equitable, decentralized, secure, and decarbonized grid that better serves our customers.
- Predictive asset monitoring, maintenance, prognostics, planning and management
- Dynamic degradation and failure prediction & control room of the future
- Grid flexibility and automated management for distributed energy resources and baseload generation
- Unmanned systems and digital imagery capture, photogrammetry/3D modeling to capture existing assets or to model new build assets
- AI-enhanced IT/OT hardening and cyber threat mitigation (Cyber Security)
- Drones
- Grid planning & forecasting for both gas & electric
- Land monitoring
Resilience and adaptation
Extreme weather, flooding, and other related events are becoming common. Preparing for such events and keeping customers and communities safe, informed, and with access to power through them is a top priority. Bring your solutions that help us better prepare, predict localized events, prevent outages where possible and, when they happen, communicate with our customers and restore power quickly.
- Extreme weather events mitigation, risk analytics, and dynamic response systems
- Anti-icing, anti-corrosion, self-healing, and undergrounding
- Resilience planning, situational awareness, communications, and dispatch automation
- Automated and responsive event and restoration effort information systems
- Utility-scale, long-duration storage (LDS)
- Off-grid, isolated energy solutions
- “Plug-and-play” or “as-a-Service” customer energy storage systems, microgrids and energy management platforms
- Distributed analytics and controls for balancing and operation of islanded microgrids
- Wildfire preparedness and response, including drought detection and advanced atmospheric and weather modeling
- Climate and water solutions for regions at risk for flooding, storm surges, etc.
- Seismic/geological solutions for mitigating hazards in areas at risk for earthquakes, landslides, avalanches, and other geological events
- Safety distance monitoring/safety on construction sites
- Physical security of critical assets and protection of assets from attacks
- Customized reliability & resiliency planning
Robotics
Technological advances have led to rapid growth of opportunities in the robotics industry. As utilities manage the aging of existing assets and develop new advanced power plants, industry will need robotic platforms and integrated data analysis tools to safely and reliably reduce the cost of operations, inspections, and maintenance of power generation assets. We expect the next generation of these platforms to operate autonomously in difficult land, sea, and air environments, while sharing space safely with human workers and high-value assets.
- Solutions for operating in inaccessible areas, such as ladders and heavy doors
- Operating robotic emergency response in difficult weather conditions
- Collaborative robots (“cobots”) for assisting human workers
- Advanced sensor payloads for radiation, audio, visual, and chemical detection
- Systems for monitoring equipment condition
- Advanced submersibles for maintenance diving tasks
- Field-based and construction automation
Waste-derived renewable fuels
Waste minimization and valorization play a critical role in a sustainable, net-zero economy, but full realization requires significant scale. Among valorization pathways, waste-to-renewable fuels has the greatest potential for scale and growth. Furthermore, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), waste-based renewable fuels are expected to see disproportionately high demand growth relative to other biofuels. While the opportunity is large, production processes for waste-derived renewable fuels are in early stages of development. Significant innovation and focused development are necessary to achieve full commercial scale and become competitive versus conventional biofuels and incumbent fossil-based fuels.
Waste-to fuels pathways are those capable of converting waste and residue-based materials; such as cellulosic farm and forestry byproducts, organic landfill or municipal waste treatment plant solids, discarded plastics and recovered carbon dioxide; into direct-replacement hydrocarbon fuels, such as renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel (kerosene), and oxygenates including methanol, ethanol, butanol, and dimethyl ether.
- New conversion technologies and production processes
- Technologies that improve or enhance yield and efficiency of existing production processes
- Technologies for converting raw waste to bio-intermediates
- Techniques, technologies, and applications that improve and promote integrated systems and systemic efficiencies
- Modular solutions that enable distributed deployment at waste source
Workforce of the future
Technology can help our workers perform their jobs more safely, efficiently, and effectively. Wearables, augmented reality, the convergence of information and operational technologies, the internet of things (IoT), and big data solutions are being combined in creative new ways to help our workforce thrive. We’re looking for technology that drives smarter operations through asset monitoring tools, equipment, analytics, and AI to improve operational safety and customer experience.
- Wearables for personnel and/or environmental monitoring safety
- Robotics, exoskeletons, and unmanned systems for completion of hazardous tasks
- XR for immersive, remote training, information accessibility, and task efficiency
- Digital worker enhancements and remote, real-time assistance on complicated jobs
- Advancement in telecom (low orbit satellites