Storage Design Strategies to Ease Production (STEP) Prize

The Storage Design Strategies to Ease Production (STEP) Prize is a $500,000 two-phase competition explicitly designed to identify and foster innovative solutions for novel energy storage technologies. This prize targets a broad spectrum of innovators, including individuals, academic institutions, nonfederal government entities, small businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and other inventors working on nascent or emerging energy storage innovations. The Storage Design STEP Prize directly addresses historical challenges experienced by energy technologies during rapid scaling and market penetration, particularly those stemming from insufficient early-stage focus on manufacturability and supply chain resilience. By guiding competitors to integrate these critical considerations earlier in their design process, the prize aims to equip developers with the tools to mitigate future market deployment and adoption challenges, thereby accelerating the commercialization of robust, resilient, and economically viable next-generation energy storage solutions for the grid.