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Updates on Finalized GDO Project Awards | November 2024 |
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In 2021, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law made a historic investment to expand and modernize this country’s critical electric infrastructure, and in 2022 the Inflation Reduction Act added to that investment. Since then, the Grid Deployment Office (GDO) has been rolling out innovative programs and funding mechanisms rooted in meaningful stakeholder and community engagement to drive widespread infrastructure improvements, accelerating access to clean, affordable energy, good-paying jobs, and economic benefits to communities across the country.
To share how historic levels of federal and private investment are positively impacting communities across the country, this monthly newsletter showcases grid projects that have successfully completed award negotiations and are beginning work.
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This month’s roundup of finalized awards includes projects from:
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Fiscal Year 2024 Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grant Awards |
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The Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grants program is designed to strengthen and modernize America’s power grid against wildfires, extreme weather, and other natural disasters that are exacerbated by the climate crisis.
The program distributes funding to states, territories, and federally recognized Indian Tribes, including Alaska Native Regional Corporations and Alaska Native Village Corporations, over five years based on a formula that includes factors such as population size, land area, probability and severity of disruptive events, and a locality’s historical expenditures on mitigation efforts. The states, territories, and Tribes then award these funds to a diverse set of projects, with priority given to efforts that generate the greatest community benefit providing clean, affordable, and reliable energy.
As of October 25, 2024, GDO has awarded the following
fiscal year 2024 awards.
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Total Funding $473,550,498 |
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49 States and the District of Columbia |
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*Tribal count does not reflect individual member tribes that are part of a consortium.
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Grid Resilience Modeling
Program: Grid Resilience Analysis and Climate Change Impacts (GRACI) Program
Recipient: Texas A&M University
Federal funding: $600,000
Texas A&M University and Prairie View A&M University will provide grid vulnerability assessments and risk planning guidance to state energy offices receiving Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grants. Grid modeling and resilience researchers from the two universities will meet individually with state officials to understand their grid resilience objectives and direct their modeling and simulation capabilities on priority regions for each state. Analysis will focus on risk assessment, state-of-the-grid assessments, resilience strategy tradeoffs, and valuing resilience investments.
» View full list of GRACI selections
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Expanding Critical Transmission Systems
Program: Transmission Facilitation Program (TFP)
Recipient: Southwest Intertie Project-North
Federal funding: $331,000,000 through a capacity contract
Southwest Intertie Project–North (SWIP-North) is 285-mile transmission line from Twin Falls, Idaho to Ely, Nevada. The project will bolster resource adequacy in the West by bringing wind energy from Idaho to Southern Nevada and to customers in California and providing a pathway for solar resources to meet evolving reliability needs in the Pacific Northwest. With construction anticipated to start in 2025, the proposed line will bring more than 2,000 MW of needed transmission capacity to the region and create over 300 new, high-quality and union construction jobs. The SWIP-North line will also help increase grid resilience during wildfires or other system disruptions by providing an alternate route to deliver power supplies. This project will also upgrade a key substation in Nevada, unlocking an additional 1,000 MW of capacity along the existing One Nevada Line, a major transmission corridor in Southern Nevada.
» View full list of TFP selections
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Improving Community Resilience
Program: GRIP: Grid Resilience Utility and Industry Grants
Recipient: Entergy New Orleans, LLC (ENO)
Federal funding: $54,828,178
Total project cost: $54,828,178
Entergy New Orleans’s (ENO) resiliency project will bolster the local grid against severe weather events through grid hardening and will better position disadvantaged communities (DACs) to withstand weather events by increasing economic stability and mitigating climate change impacts in New Orleans East (NOE). The goal of this accelerated infrastructure hardening and microgrid project is to provide an innovative, cost-effective, and resilient local grid supporting more than 49,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers, 89% of which live in DACs in NOE. This project will modernize and improve the grid by completing three key tasks: hardening the transmission system, hardening distribution lines, and installing a battery system. This includes hardening of approximately 97 transmission system structures to avoid more than 564 million customer minutes interruptions, as well as hardening of approximately 381 distribution system structures to avoid more than 45 million customer minutes interruptions. ENO has also made a commitment to train at least 200 students each year through a workforce development agreement established with the New Orleans Career Center, resulting in at least 1,000 students trained in clean energy-related jobs throughout the life of the project. ENO also is collaborating with The First72+ and Delgado Community College to support formerly incarcerated individuals in completing ENO’s line worker training program.
» View full list of GRIP projects
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Join us next month as we watch federal dollars hit the street
and projects start to grow. |
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