The activities to be funded under this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) support a subset of the BIL sections 40125(b) that focuses on:

• Identifying and mitigating cybersecurity vulnerabilities,
• Advancing the security of field devices and third-party control systems,
• Leveraging electric grid architecture to assess risks to the energy sector, and
• Performing pilot demonstrations of new technologies.

This FOA supports the Administration goals by funding RD&D projects to advance cybersecurity tools and technologies specifically designed to reduce cyber risks to renewable energy delivery infrastructure. This effort will lead to next generation tools and technologies not available today that will become widely adopted throughout the energy sector to reduce a cyber incident disruption to energy delivery.

This Announcement will support multi-year research, development, and demonstration of tools and technologies to reduce cyber risks to energy delivery infrastructure. Applications must be structured to conduct research and development in phase one and demonstration in phase two, with a “go/no-go” decision point between the phases. The decision is based on performance of the phase one work and the likelihood and benefit of potential phase two work, with the goal to get these technologies into the market. This Announcement includes four (4) Topic Areas. Only applications that specifically address a single Topic Area described in the following section will be accepted under this Announcement.

• Topic Area 1 – Address Forensic Analysis of Infected Renewable Systems
• Topic Area 2 – Enhancing Cybersecurity for Inverter-Based Resources
• Topic Area 3 – Enhancing Communications Security for Distributed Energy Resource Aggregations (DERA)
• Topic Area 4 – Innovative Technologies that Enhance Virtual Power Plant (VPP) Cybersecurity