February 9, 2026: The US Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity (OE) said on February 3 it had reopened its ‘Beyond the Meter Prize’ — with a bigger pool of $3.4 million in cash prizes — to encourage advances in integrated energy storage systems.
The DoE said there are also $800,000 worth of vouchers on offer for successful entrants to work with national laboratories.
Competitors are encouraged to form coalitions to demonstrate their existing products and strategic plans to integrate and manage consumer-focused technologies into behind the meter (BTM) energy storage systems.
The BTM prize updated submission deadline is April 30, 2026.
OE said the two-phase competition aims to accelerate advancements in integrating BTM resources and ESS to develop consumer-focused turnkey solutions while reducing transaction costs to enhance affordability.
The prizes support the mission of OE’s energy storage division to advance tools and methods to improve and simplify energy storage integration across all levels of the grid, including generation, transmission, distribution, and consumer applications.
By focusing on technology-neutral solutions, the competition aims to identify scalable approaches for improving control, integration, and interoperability.
In phase one of the competition, teams will present their products and outline strategic collaboration plans with customer-sited technology and product vendors.
The winners of this phase will receive $50,000 each upon selection and an additional $200,000 each after highlighting their solutions at the OE’s energy storage peer review this summer. Winners of this phase will also be eligible to receive a $100,000 voucher each to redeem at a single DOE national lab.
In phase two, winning teams from phase one will refine their solutions and demonstrate a commercially ready product capable of seamless integration with customer-sited technologies including BTM ESS.
At this stage, the top two winners will each be awarded $950,000 each upon presenting their advanced products and plans at the energy storage peer review set for the summer of 2027. Phase two winners will also be awarded an additional $100,000 voucher at the conclusion of the competition.
Full competition details are online: https://www.herox.com/beyondthemeter
