Tag: doe

DOE Announces $45 Million for Power Grid Cyber Resilience

Agency News, Industry News, Power/Energy/Oil & Gas sector

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $45 million to create, accelerate, and test technology that will protect the electric grid from cyber attacks.

Cyber threats to American energy systems can shut down critical energy infrastructure and disrupt energy supply, the economy, and the health of American consumers. Cybersecurity remains a priority as clean energy technologies deployed on the grid become highly automated.

Earlier this year, Supervisory Special Agent Ted P. Delacourt, a federal civilian working in the Mission Critical Engagement Unit of the Cyber Division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wrote that a cyber attack on one critical infrastructure sector may initiate a failure in another or cascade to the entire interconnected critical infrastructure network.

“The ubiquitous nature of these critical infrastructure sectors and the distribution of their physical and networked assets across a wide geographical area, often spanning the entire country, make them attractive targets,” Delacourt wrote for HSToday. “State, non-state, and criminal actors continually seek victims of opportunity across all critical infrastructure sectors for monetary and strategic gain.”

Delacourt warned that cyber attacks on critical infrastructure will continue to grow in number and frequency and continue to escalate in severity.

Combined with the additional grid upgrades funded in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the latest DOE announcement means the United States will have an opportunity to build greater cyber defenses into its energy sector. The $45 million funding announced on August 17 will support up to 15 research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) projects that will focus on developing new cybersecurity tools and technologies designed to reduce cyber risks for energy delivery infrastructure. Building strong and secure energy infrastructure across the country is a key component of reaching President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

“As DOE builds out America’s clean energy infrastructure, this funding will provide the tools for a strong, resilient, and secure electricity grid that can withstand modern cyberthreats and deliver energy to every pocket of America,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “DOE will use this investment to continue delivering on the Biden Administration’s commitment to making energy cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable.”

DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) will fund up to 15 research projects that will establish or strengthen existing research partnerships with energy sector utilities, vendors, universities, national laboratories, and service providers working toward resilient energy delivery systems. The effort will lead to the creation of next-generation tools and technologies designed to reduce cyber incident disruption to energy delivery. Researchers will aim to develop tools and technologies that enable energy systems to autonomously recognize a cyber attack, attempt to prevent it, and automatically isolate and eradicate it with no disruption to energy delivery.

There are six proposed topic areas for the projects, which include:

- Automated Cyber Attack Prevention and Mitigation: This topic area will focus on tools and technologies that enable energy systems to autonomously recognize and prevent cyber attacks from disrupting energy.
- Security and Resiliency by Design: This topic area will focus on tools and technologies that build cybersecurity and resilience features into technologies through a cybersecurity-by-design approach.
- Authentication Mechanisms for Energy Delivery Systems: This topic area will focus on tools and technologies that strengthen energy sector authentication.
- Automated Methods to Discover and Mitigate Vulnerabilities: This topic area will focus on tools and technologies that address vulnerabilities in energy delivery control system applications.
- Cybersecurity through Advanced Software Solutions: This topic area will focus on developing software tools and technologies that can be tested in a holistic testing environment that includes a development feedback cycle.
- Integration of New Concepts and Technologies with Existing Infrastructure: This topic area will require applicants to partner with energy asset owners and operators to validate and demonstrate cutting-edge cybersecurity technology that can be retrofitted into existing infrastructure.

[source: HS Today]
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DOE Announces $30 Million for Quantum Information Science to Tackle Emerging 21st Century Challenges

Agency News, Industry News, Power/Energy/Oil & Gas sector
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans to provide $30 million for Quantum Information Science (QIS) research that helps scientists understand how nature works on an extremely small scale—100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. QIS can help our nation solve some of the most pressing and complex challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to national security. Watch this video to learn more about QIS.
“Quantum computing and devices are poised to revolutionize the way we process information and develop new technologies that are currently beyond our reach,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “From developing novel materials to building better batteries to moving clean electricity across the country more efficiently, the field of quantum information sciences can help us accelerate discoveries to solve complex problems in energy and beyond.”
QIS helps researchers discover new ways to measure, analyze, process, and communicate information. Potential applications for this work range from quantum computers to enable complex power forecasting to prevent outages during extreme weather events, to quantum devices to enable new smart windows, clothes, and buildings that can change their properties on demand.
“Quantum information sciences have become essential tools for our National Labs to take on the challenges of the modern world,” said Senator Ben Ray Luján. “This strong investment in the Department’s NSRCs will support their cutting-edge discoveries and strengthen America’s competitiveness in this emerging field. The Nation’s future is inextricably tied to the future of our National Labs, and I will keep working to ensure that they receive the necessary resources to support their invaluable work.”
“The U.S. is a world leader in high-tech innovation and jobs. This investment will help ensure we continue to build on our record of achieving advancements in quantum computing research and development and the high-paying jobs it creates,” said Senator Steve Daines.
DOE's “Quantum Information Science and Research Infrastructure” $30 million funding opportunity is focused on developing advanced capabilities for synthesizing, constructing, and understanding quantum structures and phenomena, as well as making these capabilities available to the greater scientific community via access to DOE’s five Nanoscale Science Research Centers (NSRCs).
The five NSRCs were established by DOE's Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program in the Office of Science, and provide access to leading-edge synthesis, characterization, computational tools, and scientific expertise. Their research supports DOE's mission to advance the energy, economic, and national security of the United States.
All five NSRCs will be selected based on peer review, and eligible to lead applications for awards of up to three years. DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, which is funding the effort, envisions awards both for single NSRCs and NSRCs working in partnerships or teams.
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Improved Performance Planning Could Strengthen Technology Transfer

Agency News, Industry News, Power/Energy/Oil & Gas sector, Transport sector
A Department of Energy national lab developed a battery that now powers some hybrid and electric cars. But how do new energy technologies get from the lab to the market?
Transferring technologies from the DOE to private companies isn't always easy. Barriers such as the "valley of death"—a gap between the end of public funding and the start of private funding—can stop a transfer.
The Department of Energy (DOE) and its national labs have taken several steps to address potential barriers to technology transfer—the process of providing DOE technologies, knowledge, or expertise to other entities. GAO characterized these barriers as (1) gaps in funding, (2) legal and administrative barriers, and (3) lack of alignment between DOE research and industry needs. For example, the “valley of death” is a gap between the end of public funding and start of private-sector funding. DOE partly addresses this gap with its Technology Commercialization Fund, which provides grants of $100,000 to $1.5 million to DOE researchers to advance promising technologies with private-sector partners. Further, DOE's Energy I-Corps program trains researchers to commercialize new technologies and to identify industry needs and potential customers. However, DOE has not assessed how many and which types of researchers would benefit from such training. Without doing so, DOE will not have the information needed to ensure its training resources target the researchers who would benefit most.
DOE plans and tracks the performance of its technology transfer activities by setting strategic goals and objectives and annually collecting department-wide technology transfer measures, such as the number of patented inventions and licenses. However, the department does not have objective and measurable performance goals to assess progress toward the broader strategic goals and objectives it developed. For example, without a performance goal for the number of DOE researchers involved in technology transfer activities and a measure of such involvement, DOE cannot assess the extent to which it has met its objective to encourage national laboratory personnel to pursue technology transfer activities. Internal control standards for government agencies call for management to define objectives in measurable terms, either qualitative or quantitative, so that performance toward those objectives can be assessed. Moreover, DOE has not aligned the 79 existing measures that it collects with its goals and objectives, nor has it prioritized them. Some lab stakeholders said that collecting and reporting these measures is burdensome. Prior GAO work has found that having a large number of performance measures may risk creating a confusing excess of data that will obscure rather than clarify performance issues.
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