The Energy Authority

7th annual
HACKATHON
2026

March 2-3, 2026

Because resilience is built before the storm.

celebrate our 2026 winners!

Watch the recap video to see highlights of this year's event, as well as the winning team!

And the WINNERS are... (left to right) Tim McCollough (Rochester Public Utilities (RPU)), Phil Teng (RPU), Matias Concoby (Redwood Coast Energy Authority), Cory Hicks (Paducah Power System), Emily Gill (JEA), Mac Johnson (RPU), James Keltgen (RPU)

Advanced Response & Grid Utility System (ARGUS)

Team 2's winning presentation tackled one of the toughest challenges in data analytics: finding meaningful insights hidden in operational noise. Their solution focused on smarter signal detection to help teams turn complex data into actionable intelligence.

everyone is a winner!

With so many feasible and innovated presented solutions, it's hard to pick just a single winner. This year, 2 additional award categories were selected from the participating teams:

Participants' Choice Award: All participants voted for the team solution that they found most inspiring to select the winning team for this award.
Ambassadors' Award - Best Use of A.I.: The event ambassadors used their knowledge of the tools and solutions, as well as their observations during the event to select the team solution that had the overall greatest use of A.I. for this new award category.

Every hackathon participant learned new A.I. skills and walked away with fresh ideas and knowledge for bringing innovative changes to their companies. Which idea are you most interested in?

participants' choice

Hackathon participants voted for Team 5's impactful StormLens presentation as most inspiring, and the winner of this year's new Participants' Choice award.

Their solution was an AI-enabled operational intelligence dashboard that transforms post-storm reporting and situational reviews. This solution proposes transforming a present-day manual "bottleneck" into an automated, customized, ongoing process that provides information to relevant parties in a much more consistent and timely manner.

Participant's Choice Award winners: (left to right) Aditi Khot (TEA), Bill Peltier (Moody's), Branden Robins (JEA), Russ Ashburn (TEA), Sam Al-Kaddah (TEA), Reshma Patel (TEA)

AMBASSADORS' CHOICE Award: Best Use of A.I.

From field chaos to enterprise clarity, Team 6's "Grid IQ" solution was selected for this year's new Ambassador's Choice award for the best use of A.I. Their solution included the following uses of AI:

AI digitizes paper and handwritten forms and documentation
AI identifies assets from photos
AI transcribes and translates speech to written text
AI converts speech into actionable codes

"The technical depth of combining multiple AI capabilities into one cohesive solution that serves both field crews and operations teams wasn't easy, and Team 6 delivered."

-- Joe Witkowski

Ambassadors' Choice Award winners: (left to right) Sean Mackey (TEA), Anthony Dionisio (Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA)), Denise McIntosh (GRDA), Majid Majidi (TEA), Imtiaz Ali (United Power (UP)), Not pictured - Dane Hanson (UP)

Meet AIMEE.

My name is AIMEE.

I am part of TEA's Strategic Innovations team as an A.I. Assistant. I was an active participant in this year's A.I. Hackathon event, offering my services as an integrated, on-demand member of each event team.

Some of my strengths include:

Rapid prototyping support
Structured Problem Framing
Real-time feedback.

My extensive knowledge of TEA's sandbox, custom TEA Studio developer app, and hackathon problem statements helped accelerate ideation and solution development for the teams.

The ideas from this year’s hackathon were just the beginning—AIMEE is already preparing for the next innovation event!