Dive Brief:
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The Department of Energy on Tuesday awarded $2.2 billion to eight transmission projects in 18 states that could expand grid capacity by about 13 GW.
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The projects include about 600 miles of new transmission and 400 miles of reconductored wiring as well as grid-enhancing technologies, long-duration energy storage, solar energy and microgrids. The awards are from DOE’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program; project sponsors will provide about $7.8 billion in matching funding.
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The awards are part of a Biden administration effort to “to aggressively advance a more modern grid, a more energy-secure future, a grid that is more reliable and resilient and one that delivers more clean and affordable energy,” Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate advisor, said Monday during a media briefing.
Dive Insight:
The grants from DOE’s $10.5 billion GRIP program — funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law — mark the second funding round under the program. In October, DOE awarded nearly $3.5 billion in grants to support 58 projects in 44 states.
The funding announced Tuesday is from GRIP’s $5 billion grid innovation program, which focuses on projects that use new approaches to transmission, storage and distribution infrastructure to improve grid resilience and reliability.
The winning projects are:
The North Plains Connector Interregional Innovation, a 3.8-GW, 525-kV direct-current project that will connect the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and the Southwest Power Pool. It received $700 million to go with $2.9 billion in recipient cost-sharing. Its utility supporters include Allete, Avista, Minnkota Power Cooperative, Montana-Dakota Utilities, NorthWestern Energy, Otter Tail Power, Portland General Electric and Puget Sound Energy. The Montana Department of Commerce led the application effort with DOE.
The California Harnessing Advanced Reliable Grid Enhancing Technologies for Transmission project, a public-private partnership that will reconductor more than 100 miles of transmission lines with advanced conductor technologies and deploy dynamic line ratings to quickly help integrate more renewable energy in California, according to DOE. The department awarded the project $600.6 million to go with a $900.8 million match. The project, sponsored by the California Energy Commission, also supports transmission interconnection reform through process improvements, an interconnection portal, workforce investment and educational resource development, the department said. The California Independent System Operator, Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison were partners on the grant application.
Power Up New England, which includes new and upgraded points of interconnection for 4.8 GW of offshore wind and a long-duration energy storage system. It combines $389.3 million in DOE funding with nearly $500 million in recipient backing. Project developers supporting the application include Elevate Renewables, Eversource Energy, National Grid and an unnamed multi-day energy storage technology provider.
The Reliable Electric Lines: Infrastructure Expansion Framework project, which calls for using advanced conductor cables to boost transmission capacity in existing rights-of-way. It will improve grid reliability in four states and five tribal nations and enable more than 500 MW of renewable energy to come online, DOE said. The project, sponsored by the Utah Office of Energy Development, was awarded $249.6 million in federal funding to go with $252 million in recipient funding.
The Tribal Energy Resilience and Sovereignty microgrid project, which will serve the Hoopa Valley, Yurok, Karuk and Blue Lake Rancheria tribes in an outage-prone area in Northern California. The project, sponsored by the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, received $87.6 million from the DOE to go with $89 million in matched funding.
The Data Center Flexibility as a Grid Enhancing Technology project in Virginia and South Carolina, which will receive $85 million from DOE and be matched with $106 million. The Virginia Department of Energy and its partners plan to use the funding to build battery energy storage systems at the Iron Mountain data center in Virginia. They also intend to deploy a combination of turbine, solar and battery storage technologies at the Grace Complex in South Carolina, according to DOE.
The North Carolina Innovative Transmission Rebuild project, which calls for rebuilding a 230-kV transmission line with high-temperature, low-sag advanced conductors and monopole steel structures to enhance resilience and reliability. DOE gave the Duke Energy-supported project $57.1 million to go with $57.1 million in sponsor funding. The Lee-Milburnie rebuild project adds 1,600 MW of interconnection capacity in eastern North Carolina, which will help interconnect proposed solar projects and potential wind development, according to testimony filed on May 28 at the North Carolina Utilities Commission by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and other groups.
Clean Path New York, a transmission project from the New York Power Authority, Invenergy and EnergyRe that aims to deliver 1.3 GW of renewable energy from upstate New York to New York City. It landed $30 million in federal funding to go with $3.2 billion in sponsor investments.
“With these awards the Energy Department is addressing some of the most acute challenges facing our energy system, including the need to connect more clean energy to the power grid and making the grid more efficient,” Harry Godfrey, managing director of federal investment and manufacturing at Advanced Energy United, said in a statement.
DOE expects to issue the second round of funding selections for GRIP’s Grid Resilience Utility and Industry Grants program and its Smart Grid Grants program later this year.
