The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) today announced a call for applications for the second cohort of the Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator (CECA) program.
The program brings together federal experts, energy industry representatives, and innovators in a unified effort to rapidly develop cybersecurity solutions for renewable energy resources and other grid operations and to bring them to market faster.
For its second cohort, CECA seeks applicants with solutions that actively identify all industrial control system assets connected to a utility's infrastructure, both physically and virtually, to understand the totality of assets that need to be monitored and protected within the environment. The solutions should support the identification of unauthorized, unmanaged, or compromised assets to be removed or remediated. During a period of three to 12 months, cohort participants will receive professional evaluations of their technologies and partnership opportunities while developing and evaluating cyber-risk solutions in a collaborative setting.
As part of the CECA program, DOE and NREL have partnered with Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Duke Energy, and Xcel Energy in a joint effort to tackle the growing cyber threats to the U.S. energy sector, and other utilities are invited to join. The partnering utilities may use the cohort’s cybersecurity technologies once they are assessed and validated and will also gain insights from the technology developers on the latest cyber challenges, best practices, trends, and the ability to understand cyber technology solutions.
NREL will select up to five participants for the second CECA cohort. The application portal is open now through February 10, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. MT. Participants must be based in the United States and offer innovations that address the specified cybersecurity topic priority.
