October 18, 2024: The US Department of Energy announced yesterday nearly $2 billion of funding for 32 projects that will protect the US power grid against growing threats of extreme weather and help pave the way for the integration of renewable generation and large-scale BESS.
In a Zoom meeting, attended by Batteries International last night, US secretary of energy Jennifer Granholm, said: “The Administration’s Investing in America agenda has provided the largest grid investment in US history helping us add more energy to the grid faster, improve reliability and resilience, and invest in innovative technologies so customers across the county can have access to more renewable energy and pay less for their electricity.”.
A DoE statement said; “The selected projects announced through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program will deploy new, innovative transmission and distribution infrastructure and technology upgrades to enable over 7.5GW of grid capacity, speed up interconnection for clean energy projects, support nearly 6,000 good-paying jobs, and catalyze over $4.2 billion in total public and private investment to bring reliable, affordable, clean energy to Americans.”
The projects, which span 42 states and the District of Columbia, includes six projects across the southeast that IS president Jo Biden announced during his trip to Florida last week. Those six selected projects included utilities that were hit by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
The new projects will upgrade more than 950 miles of transmission by constructing more than 300 miles of new transmission lines and reconductoring or adding grid- enhancing technologies to more than 650 miles of transmission lines to increase the capacity of existing lines
Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the GRIP program is investing $10.5 billion in communities across the country to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather and climate change.
The first round of GRIP funding, announced in October 2023, included $3.5 billion for 58 projects in 44 states. In August 2024, DOE announced an additional $2.2 billion for eight additional selections. “With today’s selections, the Grid Development Office has now announced a cumulative $7.6 billion in Federal funding for 104 projects through the GRIP program. In total, GRIP projects are expected to enable 55 GW of grid capacity, equivalent to powering more than 40 million homes each year,” the DoE statement said.
The DOE said it had received applications requesting more than seven times the amount of funding available, an oversubscription rate of nearly 800%, demonstrating the tremendous need for these types of investments across the country. Improving grid resilience in the face of extreme weather events was a key need nationwide.
