The Biden administration will make investments $2.2 billion in eight initiatives below its Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership (GRIP) program to bolster the nation’s energy grid with almost 13 GW of recent transmission capability throughout 18 states.
The funding, introduced on Aug. 6, marks the second spherical below the Division of Power’s (DOE’s) GRIP program, a $10.5 billion program launched by the 2021-enacted Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act (IIJA). The regulation designates funding for three mechanisms by 2026: $2.5 billion in aggressive grants for Utility and Trade Grid Resilience, $3 billion for Sensible Grid grants, and $5 billion for Grid Innovation. In October 2023, the DOE unveiled 58 initiatives that may obtain as much as $3.5 billion to enhance grid flexibility and resiliency.
The newly unveiled picks will catalyze $10 billion in complete private and non-private investments to assist eight initiatives. Initiatives will give attention to constructing 600 miles of recent transmission strains and reconductoring greater than 400 miles of present strains throughout 18 states.
“That’s roughly six and a half Hoover Dams of energy,” Power Secretary Jennifer Granholm mentioned throughout a press name on Monday. “If you mix these Group 2 investments with those from the primary spherical, we’ll be including 50 GW of capability to the nation’s grid and over 1,000 miles of transmission strains.”
Second Spherical GRIP Investments Centered on Transmission Building and Upgrades
In line with the DOE, the second spherical of DOE picks below GRIP will emphasize large-scale transmission infrastructure enhancements below its “Grid Innovation” program.
That compares to the primary $3.5 billion spherical, which allotted funding to 16 utility and energy business initiatives alongside eight initiatives spearheaded by states, native, and tribal governments to boost grid resilience and reliability. The primary spherical additionally funded 34 “sensible grid” initiatives to spice up energy system flexibility and effectivity.
DOE GRIP Program Second Spherical Picks (August 2024). Supply: DOE/POWER
The second spherical allocates its most vital federal investments to 3 main initiatives.
A Main East-West Interconnector. GRIP allocates $700 million for the North Plains Connector Interregional Innovation (NPCII) challenge in Montana and North Dakota to develop a 3-GW high-voltage direct present (HVDC) voltage supply converter (VSC) transmission line bridging the Western and Jap Interconnections. “The core challenge, North Plains Connector, can be the primary HVDC challenge to attach three regional management entities: the Western Electrical energy Coordinating Council (WECC), Midcontinent Unbiased System Operator (MISO), and Southwest Energy Pool (SPP),” the DOE famous. The North Plains Connector is an roughly 415-mile and as much as 525 kV HVDC line that’s nonetheless within the planning and growth part. Approvals are anticipated in 2026, and the road could possibly be operational as early as 2031.
Superior Conductor Applied sciences for California. GRIP allotted $600 million to the California Harnessing Superior Dependable Grid Enhancing Applied sciences for Transmission (CHARGE 2T) challenge in California, far beneath the $2 billion sought by a coalition of vitality regulators and California-based utilities of their April 2024 filed software. Candidates embody the California Power Fee, California Public Utilities Fee, California Unbiased System Operator (CAISO), Pacific Gasoline and Electrical Firm, Southern California Edison, and the College of California, Berkeley Power Institute at Haas.
The challenge proposes to improve greater than 400 miles of metal powerlines throughout the CAISO system utilizing superior conductors that include carbon fiber and/or composite cores to permit strains to hold extra capability and probably grid enhancing applied sciences (GETs) to cut back congestion. The DOE on Monday mentioned GRIP funding will permit the challenge to reconductor “greater than 100 miles of transmission strains with superior conductor applied sciences and deploy dynamic line scores (DLR) to rapidly and considerably enhance the state’s system capability to combine extra renewable vitality onto the grid.” CHARGE 2T additionally helps transmission interconnection reform by course of enhancements, an interconnection portal, workforce funding, and academic useful resource growth.
Infrastructure to Allow 4.8 GW of Offshore Wind. The second spherical allocates $389 million to the Energy Up New England challenge, which options “new and upgraded transmission factors of interconnection in Southeast Massachusetts and Southeast Connecticut to unlock as much as 4,800 MW of further offshore wind and revolutionary battery vitality storage methods in Southwest Connecticut and Northern Maine to boost grid resilience and optimize supply of renewable vitality.” Mission builders supporting the applying embody Elevate Renewables, Eversource Power, a multi-day vitality storage expertise supplier, and Nationwide Grid. GRIP, notably, didn’t choose a second challenge, the Clear Resilience Hyperlink, proposed by a coalition of New England states to extend switch capability between the 2 areas by as much as 1 GW.
Initiatives Will Discover Present Capability Enlargement, Knowledge Heart Flexibility
GRIP, as well as, allotted $250 million to the Dependable Electrical Strains: Infrastructure Enlargement Framework (Mission RELIEF) to deploy superior conductor cables and increase transmission capability utilizing present rights-of-way, enhancing grid reliability and enabling the mixing of greater than 500 MW of renewables throughout six states: Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona, California. One other $87 million went to the Tribal Power Resilience and Sovereignty (TERAS) challenge to develop Tribe-owned microgrids in Northern California.
Clear Path New York, a $3 billion challenge comprising greater than 20 renewable initiatives and a 175-mile underground transmission line in New York State, acquired $30 million in federal funding. The challenge is a public-private collaboration between the New York Energy Authority (NYPA) and builders energyRe and Invenergy.
The second spherical of funding, nonetheless, additionally offers $85 million for Virginia’s Knowledge Heart Flexibility as a Grid Enhancing Know-how challenge. The Virginia Division of Power sought $106 million to implement battery vitality storage methods (BESS) on the Iron Mountain information heart in Virginia. The federal government company and its companions plan to deploy a mix of turbine, photo voltaic PV, and BESS applied sciences on the Grace Advanced in South Carolina.
On Monday, a DOE senior official informed reporters that the challenge was noteworthy as a result of the info heart sought to fulfill demand and turn into a versatile useful resource. “Generally, we consider information facilities as solely drawing on assets,” she defined. “However this can be a state of affairs the place we’d truly be capable to work with these kinds of complexes in an effort to assist present extra assets, significantly when there’s a necessity for excessive capability.”
A Holistic Strategy to T&D Modernization, Enlargement
DOE officers on Monday mentioned extra GRIP funding is on the horizon. “There’s far more to return from GRIP,” mentioned Granholm. “Very quickly—we’re going to be anticipating that this fall or in early winter—we’ll be asserting the subsequent spherical of picks below GRIP.”
Ali Zaidi, White Home Nationwide Local weather Adviser, on Monday famous that the funding is only one half of a bigger technique and roadmap laid out by the Biden administration to modernize the grid. In its October 2023–issued Nationwide Transmission Wants Examine, the DOE prompt that even assuming reasonable demand progress and excessive clear vitality progress, 54,500 GW-miles of recent transmission will likely be wanted nationwide by 2035—a 64% enhance from as we speak’s transmission system.
As detailed in POWER’s latest in-depth profile on federal actions to broaden the nation’s transmission and distribution capability, the DOE has set formidable targets for grid enhancements, together with upgrading 100,000 miles of transmission strains by 2029.
Together with allocating important funding below the GRIP program, the company’s Grid Deployment Workplace just lately introduced three interregional transmission strains to obtain $1.3 billion in federal funding below the Transmission Facilitation Program (TAP), together with initiatives in Utah, New England, and Arizona. Earlier this yr, it recognized 10 preliminary Nationwide Curiosity Electrical Transmission Corridors (NIETCs) to prioritize federal assist and streamline regulatory processes. The DOE’s NIETC designation course of, which includes a four-phase strategy with public suggestions, environmental critiques, and a complete examine, could produce remaining designations as early as subsequent yr, company officers prompt.
To expedite allowing, the DOE established the Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorization and Permits (CITAP) program and finalized a rule to streamline environmental critiques for transmission upgrades. And, to increase the expediency of environmental critiques, the DOE on April 30 finalized a categorical exclusion—the only of three varieties of evaluation established by the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act (NEPA)—for upgrading and rebuilding T&D strains. The rule bolsters prospects for T&D line upgrades and rebuilds, together with permitting the alternative of parts with extra environment friendly or resilient expertise, corresponding to reconductoring. Most just lately, in Might, the Biden administration, in partnership with 21 states, launched the Federal-State Trendy Grid Deployment Initiative.
“This can also be a part of a method to deploy extra capability on the grid in present rights of manner, a software that we’ve tried to advance actually from day one,” Zaidi mentioned. The brand new GRIP picks present “thematically how these revolutionary interregional initiatives are in a position to advance in a allowing ecosystem that has been vastly improved, because of the management from the Biden-Harris administration and from Secretary Granholm,” he mentioned. “You see lots of federal interstate and personal sector collaboration, particularly in areas to ship key regional outcomes, together with the development of almost 4.8 GW of offshore wind within the Northeast.
Zaidi highlighted the pace at which the initiatives have been carried out. “I feel again to a gathering the President convened within the Roosevelt Room two summers in the past. Secretary [Granholm] was there, [Interior Secretary Deb Hollen] was there, and we had governors from the Northeast. One of many huge subjects they talked about was the necessity to construct and for the federal authorities to be a accomplice in constructing regional infrastructure to harness this energy from off of our shores. This reveals dramatic progress, advancing the playbook that was actually drawn up in that room.”
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
