Florida Gets $29 Million Boost to Help Grid in Extreme Weather – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

I grew up in Florida and lived here through college. Then I moved away for about 14 years. Then I moved back about 6 years ago. In short, I’ve lived here for approximately 3 decades. We went through some hurricanes when I was younger, and were certainly threatened by many hurricanes, but Hurricane Ian two years ago and Hurricane Milton this year were the biggest hurricanes I’ve gone through. My neighborhood at the moment looks like a new construction site because of all the roof work being done because of the damage from Milton, and we just had our own new roof put on a couple days ago. While I have to say I was pretty impressed with how well utilities handled these hurricanes and got electricity running again after the storms passed, there was still a lot of power outage and all of the struggles and costs that come with that. It could be better.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) recognizes this and is here to help. Yes, when someone says, “Hello, I’m with the government and I’m here to help,” most of us actually do appreciate that. The wonderful thing today is that battery technology has advanced massively and costs are dramatically lower than they were when I was a kid or in college. And batteries are the most responsive and useful thing you can add to the grid, especially to help during storms. Naturally, that’s where the DOE is now directing some funding.

“In a continued effort to expedite the build out of a resilient and reliable electric grid, today the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $28.7 million investment in a more resilient and equitable energy system to protect Florida communities and businesses against extreme weather events,” the DOE writes. “Supported by a Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program Grid Resilience Grant, the City of Tallahassee Electric & Gas Utility’s selected project will deploy a utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) to provide backup power to facilities providing critical services, like nursing homes and community centers. The BESS is also expected to provide an estimated overall annual fuel cost savings of $160,000 that will benefit municipal utility customers.”

Tallahassee?!?! That’s too far away — that’s not going to help me! Joking aside, I’ve got enough home energy storage capacity to get me through the aftermath of a storm (thanks, Bluetti and Yokoshima), and I’m sure the Tallahassee region could use the battery storage boost and greater resilience when hit with hurricanes. “Like many communities across the country, Tallahassee, Florida experiences extreme weather events, and its existing substation is overburdened,” the DOE explains.

“The residents of Florida repeatedly bear the impacts of extreme weather change, and the Biden-Harris Administration continues to work hard to ensure that all of the nation’s grid is hardened in the face of intensified effects of climate change,” US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm (for a few more weeks) adds. “The Administration’s Investing in America agenda has delivered the largest grid investment in U.S. history, adding more power to the grid faster, improving reliability and resilience, and investing in innovative technologies so all Americans can have access to affordable, reliable energy.”

Looking more broadly, this GRIP program was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It’s a $10.5 billion program for the vast deployment of solutions like the one mentioned here, and not just in Florida of course. It’s for “communities across the country to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather.” That includes fires in California, floods in North Carolina, and more. So far, since October of last year, $7.6 billion has been sent out to 105 different projects, spanning all 50 states and Washington, DC. “In total, GRIP projects are expected to enable 53 GW of grid capacity, equivalent to powering nearly 40 million homes each year. All told, through the first two rounds of funding, the GRIP program selected projects will add or upgrade nearly 2,500 miles of transmission.” They better get the remaining $3 billion deployed quickly though or the Trump administration may kill the program (or they’ll just keep sending the money out and claim credit for what Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden in the White House got passed, as often happens).

Details on those 105 projects can be found here. The aim is to announce the third round of GRIP funding in 2025.

Here are a few more notes from the DOE on the broader work done by the Biden administration and how all of this fits into it:

“This investment supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which sets a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investment in climate, clean energy, and other areas flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

“The Investing in America agenda is providing the largest electric grid infrastructure investment in history to strengthen America’s power grid while lowering energy costs and creating good-paying jobs. Under the Biden-Harris Administration’s leadership, the U.S. is projected to build more new electric generation capacity this year than in two decades while also mobilizing to upgrade thousands of miles of existing transmission lines. This includes catalyzing nationwide collaboration on modern grid technologies and funding their deployment, accelerating transmission permitting, and increasing grid capacity to support electricity demand to support increased electrification, data centers, and manufacturing.”