The Dept. of Energy today announced the availability of up to $8.25 billion in loans from its Loan Programs Office (LPO) and the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) for efforts to expand and improve the nation’s transmission grid — all in support of the Biden Administration’s commitment to modernize the nation’s power grid and infrastructure and deliver 100% clean energy to businesses and homeowners by 2035.
“DOE is making financing available for projects that improve resilience and expand transmission capacity across the electrical grid, so we can reliably move clean energy from places where it’s produced to places where it’s needed most,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “This is a down payment on our efforts to modernize our transmission nationwide — but we need the American Jobs Plan to complete them. These investments will make our power system more resilient against threats and more reliable as we increase our clean energy capacity, creating thousands of jobs in the process.”
President Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for historic investments to modernize and upgrade the country’s power grid, improving resilience against cyber threats, natural disasters and physical attacks. This includes expansion and upgrades to transmission lines — which are also essential to the administration’s goal of reaching 100% clean electricity by 2035. Renewable energy capacity is often generated far away from population centers where demand is highest. Without added transmission capacity, the electricity grid cannot reliably and consistently deliver renewably sourced power from these points of generation to high demand areas.
As DOE joins federal efforts to increase the grid’s renewable energy capacity — such as the plan announced last month to add 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 — Secretary Granholm has made addressing transmission challenges a key priority. Today’s announcement lays out financial tools that DOE can bring to bear in support of transmission development. Passage of the American Jobs Plan will allow DOE to expand on these resources.
DOE has two separate financing streams available to assist with transmission projects:
- Up to $5 billion in loan guarantees from LPO. LPO’s Title 17 Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program and Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program allow DOE to support innovative transmission projects along with transmission projects owned by federally recognized tribal nations or Alaska Native Corporations. This includes high-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems, transmission to connect offshore wind, and facilities sited along rail and highway routes.
- Up to $3.25 billion from WAPA’s Transmission Infrastructure Program (TIP) revolving loan program. TIP is a unique federal debt financing program, congressionally mandated to support transmission and related infrastructure projects that facilitate the delivery of reliable, affordable, clean power in the Western United States. Applicants can leverage WAPA’s technical transmission expertise for project development support and access low-cost capital.
Details on loan guarantees through LPO and application instructions can be found here. Details on loan eligibility through TIP and application instructions can be found here. The full list of announcements around efforts to enhance the electrical grid can be found here.
News item from DOE
It looks to me like this program is going to fund the east coast wind farms and infrastructure HVDC interconnections, when there is a need for plains States HVDC for southern and south west HVDC from solar PV farms in the south and south west and existing and future wind farms in the central plains States to capture and distribute electricity from where it is generated to where it will be used. There’s a lot of infrastructure that needs transmission corridors, before they can be constructed. Solar PV and wind generation needs to be coupled with energy storage as part of the project from now on. IF one is to keep the “grid” system, then interconnection is primary, energy storage is necessary to take care of intermittent clouds or wind dropping off and use overgeneration as a time shifted energy supply to dispatch like the current Peaker plants are doing now. Being able to enjoy the path of the sun and the wind across the U.S. every day from north to south and east to west coasts would create a more robust grid on a national level. States, may have to “give up” some of their power in electricity regulation to create a national wholesale grid with off taker Co-Ops, CCAs, utilities and residential, commercial, industrial “partners” feeding ISOs and RTOs for a day ahead energy market.