This story was originally published by Canary Media.
The U.S. power grid is overburdened and under-resourced — and the Biden administration just announced a major investment aimed at helping solve those problems.
The Department of Energy has offered $2.2 billion to eight projects across 18 states that could expand and strengthen the grid. The projects range from deploying grid-enhancing technologies that boost the capacity of existing power lines to building brand-new high-voltage transmission cables that will enable wind farms in the Great Plains and off the coast of New England to plug into the grid.
Tuesday’s announcement represents another significant federal investment in the U.S. transmission grid, which isn’t growing fast enough to allow clean energy to come online at the pace needed to combat climate change. Energy experts warn that without a doubling or tripling of existing grid capacity, the country will fail to hit the Biden administration’s goal of halving carbon emissions by 2030.
The $2.2 billion in federal grants, to be matched by nearly $10 billion in private sector and local government investments, will help the country take a small step toward that goal. The new projects will enable 13 gigawatts of new clean energy resources to be connected to the grid, DOE says, including 4.8 gigawatts of offshore wind. The awards are conditional for now — all projects must still commit matching funds and meet certain milestones to receive the federal money.
The grants mark the second round of funding under the DOE’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program, created by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In October 2023, the the program, known as GRIP, chose 58 projects across 44 states to receive a collective $3.5 billion. Those projects are expected to allow 35 gigawatts of new clean energy capacity to come online.
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The newly announced projects are largely focused on a core set of “innovative grid deployment” technologies that DOE has identified as needing further government support in order to see increased adoption. Ultimately, the goal is to “advance a more modern grid, a more energy secure future, a grid that’s more reliable and more resilient, and one that delivers more affordable and clean energy,” Ali Zaidi, the national climate adviser to the White House, said in a Monday briefing with reporters.
One of the largest and most ambitious efforts among the winners is the North Plains Connector Interregional Innovation project, which is set to receive $700 million with the aim of building high-voltage direct current, or HVDC, interconnections across Montana and North Dakota. The partners in the consortium, including the Montana Department of Commerce, the Colstrip Transmission System, and grid developer Grid United, plan to invest $2.9 billion in matching funds.
The consortium’s core project, the North Plains Connector, would be the first HVDC line to connect the power grid managed by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which covers much of the Intermountain West, with the transmission networks of Midwest grid operators Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool, which connect to the broader Eastern U.S. grid.
A host of studies from the DOE, universities, and energy analysts have identified interregional transmission lines as vital for reducing the cost of the clean energy transition and making the grid more resilient against extreme weather. The North Plains Connector would allow the Western and Eastern U.S. grids to share 14 times more electricity than they do today and enable about 3 gigawatts of new generation capacity to be built in the wind-rich states it crosses.
Bolstering offshore wind transmission is another key target for federal funding, given the cost and complexities involved — something another GRIP winner aims to help.
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The Power Up New England project, a collaboration with the states of Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont, is set to receive $390 million in grants to codevelop shared “points of interconnection” — onshore facilities to connect the high-voltage underwater cables carrying power from offshore wind farms. The project could enable 4.8 gigawatts of offshore wind — far more than is online in the U.S. today — and reduce wholesale energy supply costs for New England customers by about $1.55 billion, according to DOE estimates.
Several of the grant winners plan to deploy advanced conductors — high-tech power cables that are lighter, stronger, and able to carry more electricity than traditional cables — to expand the capacity of existing transmission lines.
Those include the California Harnessing Advanced Reliable Grid Enhancing Technologies for Transmission project, which was awarded $600 million; the Utah Office of Energy Development’s Reliable Electric Lines: Infrastructure Expansion Framework, which was awarded $249 million; and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality State Energy Office in partnership with utility Duke Energy, which were awarded $57 million.
Two other projects are aimed not at the grid itself but at “behind the meter” applications to help ease grid stresses. The Tribal Energy Resilience and Sovereignty project will direct $87 million in grants for the Hoopa Valley, Yurok, Karuk, and Blue Lake Rancheria tribes in Northern California to develop tribe-owned and -operated microgrids.
The other behind-the-meter project is aimed at managing the impact of data centers being added to the grid at an unprecedented clip. The Virginia Department of Energy and its partners won $87 million to install batteries at the Iron Mountain data center in Virginia — one of a cluster of facilities in Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley,” where surging power demand is stretching the grid thin. The grant also earmarks money to explore installing microturbines, solar, and batteries at a data center in South Carolina.
These on-site resources can provide resilience for data centers themselves and can relieve stress caused by data center power loads during times when grid demand threatens to outstrip supply, Maria Robinson, director of the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, said during Monday’s briefing.
“We might be able to work with these types of complexes in order to help provide more resources to the grid, particularly when there’s a need for capacity” during summer heat waves or winter storms, she said.
And though the new projects take on a variety of flavors, they are all ultimately chasing after a singular goal: bolstering a power grid that is central to the effort to stop using fossil fuels.
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