U.S. DOE awards $3.5B for projects that strengthen electric grid, deploy more renewable energy
The Biden Administration is awarding $3.46 billion for 58 projects across 44 states to strengthen the nation’s electric grid resilience and reliability in response to an increasing number of extreme weather events stemming from climate change.
This effort, called the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program, will be managed by the Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO). It funds activities to modernize the electric grid to reduce impacts of natural disasters and also seeks to increase the flexibility and reliability of the electric power system with a focus on unlocking more solar, wind, and other types of clean energy.
Overall, these projects, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will help bring more than 35 gigawatts of new renewable energy online, invest in 400 microgrids, and create union jobs through a partnership with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The projects will also leverage more than $8 billion in federal and private investments.
“Extreme weather events fueled by climate change will continue to strain the nation’s aging transmission systems,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Wednesday. “Today’s announcement represents the largest-ever direct investment in critical grid infrastructure, supporting projects that will harden systems, improve energy reliability and affordability—all while generating union jobs for highly skilled workers.”
The $3.46 billion in awards announced this week represents the first round of selections under the broader $10.5 billion GRIP Program. The selections include projects in several states, including Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Oregon, along with some multi-state regional projects.
In Georgia, the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority and the Family of Companies that supports the Georgia electric cooperatives was awarded $507 million to update the smart grid infrastructure through investments in battery storage, local microgrids, and new transmission lines. With a focus on remote and historically underinvested communities, the project will improve reliability, decrease the frequency and duration of power outages, reduce energy bills, and create more than 140 construction jobs.
In Louisiana, $55 million was awarded to Entergy New Orleans to enhance the local grid’s resilience to severe weather by hardening existing transmission lines and distribution systems. Entergy New Orleans will harden approximately 97 structures, which is expected to avoid more than 564 million customer minutes interruptions. It will also deploy distribution hardening for 381 structures, which will avoid more than 45 million customer minutes interruptions.
“This is a huge win for our customers, for our community, and for the City of New Orleans,” Deanna Rodriguez, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans, said. “Federal grant funds at this scale will enable us to make our grid stronger — to keep the lights on longer when storms threaten in the future, and to restore power more quickly when service is interrupted.”
In addition, funding will go to launch an initiative with 15 government entities, energy companies, and community and academic institutions to enhance emergency response operations in the state of Louisiana. This will be done by deploying a network of Community Resilience Hubs powered by distributed energy resources microgrids. These microgrids can stand alone or integrate with utility-owned electric grid infrastructure and back-up generation assets.
In Michigan, DTE Energy will deploy adaptive networked microgrids, which can adapt to changing energy demands and supply conditions in real-time. The microgrids will rely on new grid sensing and fault location devices and communication tools that will enhance reliability and reduce the number and total duration of outages in the microgrid areas. Further, Consumers Energy (CE) will use funding to make infrastructure investments in some of Michigan’s most historically underinvested communities, upgrading the backbone of its circuit systems and increasing capacity at local substations.
“Building a stronger grid to withstand Michigan’s fiercest weather is our top priority. We are thrilled the Department of Energy recognizes and is willing to support our plan to keep the lights on 24/7 for our nearly 2 million customers,” said Tonya Berry, Consumers Energy’s senior vice president of transformation and engineering. “We consider this a $100 million down payment on our Reliability Roadmap.”
In Pennsylvania, PPL Electric Utilities will integrate distributed energy resources and enable real-time grid control to reduce outage duration and frequency, while Duquesne Light Company will enhance system capacity to unlock clean energy generation and meet targets established in the state’s Climate Action Plan. In addition, PECO Energy Company, awarded $100 million, will use the funding to implement a strategy it calls the CREATE (Creating a Resilient, Equitable, and Accessible Transformation in Energy) Plan. The CREATE Plan will increase grid reliability and resilience through substation flood mitigation, upgrading underground monitoring and control technologies, deploying battery systems for backup power, replacing aging infrastructure, and installing advanced conductors to increase grid capacity.
“With our extensive expertise in delivering large-scale utility infrastructure projects on time and on budget, and our focus on investing in reliability and resiliency, we are well-positioned to execute on our CREATE Plan,” PECO President and CEO Mike Innocenzo said. “Leveraging this federal grant will also allow us to increase grid capacity to enable renewable energy, electric vehicle charging, and job growth in our region while minimizing the impact on customer bills.”
In Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and Portland General Electric (PGE) were awarded $250 million to upgrade transmission capacity and connect PGE customers with the isolated renewable resources east of the Cascade Mountains, including those on the Warm Springs Reservation. This area will be connected to up to 1,800 MW of solar resources through enhancements to the existing 230 kV Bethel-Round Butte transmission line. Also, PGE will deploy an artificial intelligence-enabled computing platform to improve the connection of distributed energy resources, such as solar, as well as informed modeling that can predict pre-outage conditions and assist real-time decisions.
“Expanding transmission capacity is essential to keeping power reliable and affordable during the transition to a clean energy future,” Maria Pope, PGE president and CEO, said. “PGE is honored to deepen our relationship with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs through this mutually beneficial partnership.”
Additionally, PacifiCorp was awarded $150 million to update infrastructure for fire resistance and prevention in Oregon and five neighboring states. This will help reduce outages and risks, while also improving flood resilience and creating training and employment opportunities in partnership with the IBEW. Roughly $100 million will support PacifiCorp’s Equity-aware Enhancement of grid Resiliency (PEER) project, which is designed to reduce the impact of extreme weather events on disadvantaged communities in areas at highest risk for wildfire. An additional $50 million will go toward the company’s Resiliency Enhancement for Fire mitigation and Operational Risk Management (REFORM) project, which enhances control center capabilities through weather forecasting models and artificial intelligence-enabled cameras that detect wildfires.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure significant federal funding for programs that support our customers, especially those in historically underrepresented and marginalized communities,” Rohit Nair, PacifiCorp’s director of engineering standards and grid modernization, said. “We are committed to improving resilience and reliability in those communities and will be matching these federal funds dollar-for-dollar with our own investment in these programs.”
In addition, awards went to several regional projects that will expand transmission across multiple states. This includes the Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue Transmission Study Process and Portfolio (JTIQ), which goes across Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, and South Dakota. This project is for the construction of five transmission projects across seven Midwest states, replacing the traditional interconnection study approach with a coordinated, long-range, interregional assessment that studies multiple projects at once.
Also, funding went to the Wildfire Assessment and Resilience for Networks (WARN), which encompasses Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. With this project, Holy Cross Energy, in conjunction with NRECA Research, will launch a wildfire mitigation project with a consortium of 39 small, rural, not-for-profit electric co-ops in high-threat areas.
