CRI Seeks a Utility Partner — DOE Deadline April 9
CRI is seeking a load-serving entity to sign a Letter of Support for a Department of Energy grid cybersecurity project, i.e. the "Digitizing Utilities Prize," which is focused on improving how utilities use data, manage risk, and integrate distributed resources. The deadline is April 9.
We are partnering with a startup called ZSub on a self-sovereign cryptographic mesh protocol (SSCM) for secure grid communications and federated data infrastructure. In basic terms: this is a security layer that enables coordination across utilities without exposing raw data.
DOE requires us to have the letter of support to participate. (Note: this is not a funding commitment, just an expression of interest to explore a pilot with us.) The letter can be from any of the following entities.
- Rural electric cooperatives
- Utilities owned by a political subdivision of a state, such as a municipally owned electric utility
- Utilities owned by any agency, authority, corporation, or instrumentality of one or more political subdivisions of a state
- Investor-owned electric utilities
- Regional transmission operators/independent system operators
- Electric aggregators
- Electric wire owning and/or operating entities.
CRI’s readership includes many of you operating in these environments. If this is a potential fit, please reach out directly
Our team for this project includes:
- Luke Arno – 27 years building distributed systems and secure platforms across infrastructure startups;
- Sam Larson – DOJ antitrust background, plus 15 years in fintech and data;
- Parker Mooney – distributed computing infrastructure specialist; and
- Michael Cade – founder of CRI and regulatory analyst for large commercial and industrial energy users in California.
DOE Contest Details
The DOE is inviting utilities and energy sector partners to work with software developers, data experts, and scientists to improve digital systems, data analytics, and risk-informed resource integration.
This includes building systems for data processing, quality assurance, storage, and deletion. Selected solutions may be shared across the sector as examples of how to address these challenges.
What ZSub Does
As utilities go digital (smart meters, automated substations, distributed energy connections) they create more entry points for cyberattacks. The standard defenses (passwords, firewalls, VPNs) all share the same weakness: if an attacker steals the right credential, they're inside.
At the same time, utilities can't easily share data with each other, even when doing so would help everyone detect threats faster and run more reliable grids. Privacy rules, competitive concerns, and a lack of secure infrastructure keep every utility defending on its own.
ZSub's approach eliminates the central password database entirely. Instead of storing credentials on a server that can be hacked, every device and user generates its own cryptographic identity: no shared secrets, no central target. Think of it as a lock that doesn't need a key server, because each device is its own key.
This same architecture also makes it possible for utilities to share operational data without exposing raw information to each other, solving the collaboration problem and the security problem in one layer.
In short, ZSub enables secure coordination across utilities without introducing new attack surfaces.