Department of Energy seeks proposals for $1.2B round of Transmission Facilitation Program efforts
Working through its Transmission Facilitation Program to expand and modernize the U.S. electric grid, the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently kicked off a second round of request for proposals (RFP), offering up to $1.2 billion.
With funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the program and this RFP will support the accelerated buildout of transmission through capacity contracts, helping to overcome financial roadblocks to new and upgraded transmission lines. The administration set 2035 as the year by which to achieve fully clean electricity nationwide, but a DOE-run National Transmission Needs Study last year estimated that the country will need to more than double existing regional transmission capacity and expand its interregional transmission capacity more than fivefold to maintain system reliability and improve resilience to severe weather, counter congestion and maintain access to low-cost clean energy.
“There’s no way around it: to realize the full benefit of the nation’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, we need to more than double our grid capacity,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said. “President Biden’s historic clean energy legislation is helping modernize the nation’s transmission to deliver reliable, more affordable energy to every American community in turn driving down costs for American families and generating good paying jobs for American workers.”
The Transmission Facilitation Program, as administered by the Grid Deployment Office, intends to support this by borrowing up to $2.5 billion to assist in the construction of high-capacity transmission lines. Capacity contracts under the latest RFP would commit DOE to purchase up to half of the maximum capacity of a transmission line. It is meant to provide certainty of development to encourage investors and secure customers for given lines. Ultimately, DOE will sell its capacity rights in projects to other customers to recover costs.
A previous solicitation in this area was issued in 2022, which resulted in $1.3 billion given for three transmission lines crossing six states. Those lines are expected to add 3.5 GW of additional grid capacity nationwide.
Applicants to this new RFP will need to get the first part of their submissions in by March 11, 2024.
