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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) today released two Notices of Intent (NOIs) to issue funding to support research and development of groundbreaking electric grid technologies. Later this year, OE intends to issue two Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) totaling $13 million to promote a more reliable, resilient, secure, and affordable electric grid.
Upgrading critical systems and controls will extend the life of existing grid components, increase the grid’s ability to receive, transmit, and deliver electricity, and improve communications to help predict and prevent failures. Moreover, quantifying and clearly communicating risk and uncertainties to decision-makers and human operators enables more accurate and effective prediction, prevention, and mitigation of cascading failures in the grid.
“These funding opportunities will advance the development of innovative hardware and cutting-edge software solutions that will increase the reliability and lower the overall cost of America’s electricity transmission system,” said Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary for Electricity.
The funding opportunities will include:
- $8 million Renewable Integration Management with Innovative High Voltage Direct Current Power Circuit Breakers (REIMAGINE BREAKERS) NOFO
- $5 million Human-Centric Analytics for Resilient & Modernized Power sYstems (HARMONY) NOFO
REIMAGINE BREAKERS
OE and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) plan to issue the REIMAGINE BREAKERS NOFO to support research and development related to high voltage direct current (HVDC) power circuit breakers. This NOFO aims to support grid modernization and the advancement of clean energy by reducing the cost of high voltage circuit breaker technology, therefore supporting widespread adoption of HVDC transmission systems.
HVDC is a key technology that can increase the electric grid’s capacity to receive, transmit, and deliver a large amount of energy from generation sources like wind, and it can be more efficient and reliable compared to today’s existing solutions. HVDC lines can also lead to improved grid integration of renewables as well as long-distance electricity transmission to population centers.
DOE anticipates announcing this $8 million NOFO ($7 million from OE, $1 million from WETO) by the end of 2024. The number of awards depends on how many applications are submitted and fund availability. If the NOFO is released, it will be posted at FedConnect.
HARMONY
Preventing and mitigating power grid failures are crucial for reliability and resiliency. This NOFO from OE intends to improve risk assessment and communication for grid operators in the age of big data. Grid transformation trends, which include the integration of renewable energy and EV charging, are changing long-standing assumptions about power system operations. This is causing significant gaps in assessing and resolving systematic uncertainties in power grids.
Better understanding the impacts to power grid operations requires more advanced analytics to help grid operators to predict, prevent, and mitigate cascading failures in power grids. Advanced, physics- and human behavior-aware analytics are critical to address challenges related to new and variable system dynamics. These analytics are also important for enabling renewable integration, increasing infrastructure decentralization, and infrastructure interdependency under a changing climate. Uncertainty-informed advanced analytics that extract actionable information from data and knowledge need to consider not only systems’ physics but also human factors to be effective.
If the NOFO is released, approximately $5 million in funding is expected to be available to award new cooperative agreements for three-year research and development projects. OE is expected to announce the NOFO by the end of 2024. It will be posted at FedConnect.
Learn more about OE.
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