Responding to concerns voiced by the American Public Power Association, the Department of Energy has revised a Frequently Asked Questions section included in the DOE’s overall guidance related to its Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program.
The DOE clarified the guidance to note that consortia applications, including those led by a Joint Action Agency, could include the investments of proposed subrecipients involved in the application in the Report on Resilience Investments, noted Sarah Mathias, Senior Government Relations Director at APPA.
“This is a critical clarification as the law requires that DOE may not award a grant in an amount greater than the total amount that the eligible entity has spent in previous three years on efforts to reduce the likelihood and consequences of disruptive events,” she said.
A previous version of the FAQ document said that only investments made by the prime applicant could be considered as the previous three years spending on resilience investments. Without this change, a JAA (or other consortia application) applying on behalf of several public power utilities could not count the investments those members made in resiliency towards their potential total grant amount, limiting the total amount the consortia could receive if selected for a GRIP grant.
As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office is administering the $10.5 billion GRIP Program to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather and climate change.
In October 2023, DOE announced $3.46 billion for 58 projects across 44 states to strengthen electric grid resilience and reliability across America. Several public power utilities and communities will receive funding through the first round of the GRIP Program.
On November 14, 2023, DOE announced up to $3.9 billion available through the second round funding opportunity of the GRIP Program for Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025. Successful projects will deploy federal funding to maximize grid infrastructure deployment at-scale and leverage private sector and non-federal public capital to advance deployment goals, DOE said.
In an episode of APPA’s Public Power Now podcast posted in late February, two officials from Washington State’s Snohomish County PUD: John Hieb, Principal Engineer, and Suzy Oversvee, Senior Program Manager for New Energy Initiatives, and Daniel Crawley, Supervisor for Strategic Research at Chattanooga, Tenn.-based EPB, detailed lessons learned from the application process for the GRIP Program.
