US DOE invests US$2 billion for grid resilience following Hurricane Helene
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The US Department of Vitality (DOE) will make investments US$2 billion in 38 grid transmission initiatives throughout 42 states and the District of Columbia.
The investments will give protection to the grid from the increasing menace of grievous climate, lower costs for communities and enlarge grid capability as ask grows, the DOE acknowledged.
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The DOE launched the funding shortly after Hurricanes Milton and Helene induced extensive destruction in the southeastern US. The DOE acknowledged that this spherical of the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) programme bought bids for over seven times the on hand funding, which it acknowledged demonstrated “the mammoth need for all these investments throughout the country”.
In its announcement of the funding, the DOE highlighted a preference of initiatives. These integrated the reach of looped transmission feeds in Indiana and Illinois, where grid substations face “increasing outages from grievous climate events and tornados”. Hoosier Vitality Rural Electric Cooperative and Southern Illinois Vitality Cooperative will produce new loops to join with 10 substations in Seven counties throughout the 2 states.
Yet every other mission will ogle the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a regional utility in the southeastern US, habits 84 resilience subprojects throughout Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. This could add over 2.4GW of transmission grid capability, lower TVA’s describe voltaic interconnection queue and lower outage time. The mission will consist of the first interconnection tie between TVA and the Southwest Vitality Pool, which the DOE acknowledged will “provide an anticipated 94% reduction in localised outage intervals”.
Overall, the DOE acknowledged that the chosen initiatives will add bigger than 300 miles of transmission traces and upgrade a additional 650 miles with grid-bettering technologies.
A fat checklist of GRIP initiatives would possibly even be chanced on right here.
“The devastating and lethal Hurricanes, Helene and Milton, have positioned on stark level to how grievous climate events proceed to stress the nation’s aging electrical systems,” acknowledged US vitality secretary Jennifer Granholm. ““The [current] Administration’s Investing in The US agenda has supplied an well-known grid investment in US ancient previous.”
White House national local climate handbook Ali Zaidi acknowledged: “We need our grid higher tailored to storms love Hurricanes Helene and Milton – and other grievous local climate failures love the wildfires out west. We need our grid higher wired to dawdle up The US’s manufacturing renaissance and management in man made intelligence…Lately’s investment will make that.”
The US grid is proving the predominant barrier to the growth of electrical energy technology capability throughout the country. Info analysed by PV Tech Top rate earlier this 12 months chanced on that around 1TW of describe voltaic initiatives are waiting in US interconnection queues. Of the main interconnection networks, the Midcontinent Fair System Operator (MISO) has an well-known queue by some distance, with over 100GW added to the backlog in 2023.
The Texas grid operator, ERCOT, has a smaller queue in spite – or even because – of the indisputable fact that Texas lately modified into the US voice with primarily the most deployed describe voltaic PV capability. The ERCOT market has in general faster and more efficient connection processes for describe voltaic and storage initiatives, which PV Tech Top rate regarded into in dialogue with Grid reform educated Tyler Norris.
The DOE has in most cases made investments into the US grid, largely via its Transmission Facilitiation Program (TFP). Earlier this month it launched a US$1.5 billion investment to enhance over 7GW of newest transmission capability in four separate initiatives.
With primarily the most recent funding, the GRIP programme has now invested a full US$7.6 billion into 104 initiatives throughout the country. The mission has a funds of US$10.5 billion, which the DOE expects to facilitate around 55GW of grid transmission capability.
The newest field of our downstream journal, PV Tech Vitality, regarded into the challenges going via the US describe voltaic and vitality storage sectors as a outcomes of the country’s growing older grid, and the methods that the DOE and the Federal Vitality Regulatory Commission (FERC) have to resolve it. (Top rate salvage admission to).
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