On Tuesday, DOE said it plans to help the Tennessee Valley Authority fund 84 transmission and distribution projects across eight states to add about 2.5 gigawatts of grid capacity. The award totals roughly $581 million, with $250 million in federal money and $331 million from TVA.
“America’s electric grid cannot become a roadblock to economic growth,” said Katie Jereza, who heads DOE’s Office of Electricity.
Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly went further, blaming “years of misguided energy policies under the previous administration” for leaving the bulk power system “less robust than it should be.”
From $250 Million To $10.5 Billion
The announcement for TVA support from the DOE is alongside the ongoing SPARK program under the GRIP program… If the acronyms are starting to blur together, here is the simple version:
- Tuesday’s award is for $250 million, written to TVA and its local power companies.
- SPARK, DOE’s acronym for “Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades,” is the bigger, nationwide program. It puts $1.9 billion of federal money, plus $3.35 billion in cost share, into 31 projects in 26 states that will reconductor or rebuild more than 1,500 miles of existing lines and free up over 23 GW of capacity. TVA’s slice is about $80 million to upgrade roughly 125 miles of lines in Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina with advanced conductors, adding about 1,900 MW.
- GRIP, the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program, is the even bigger $10.5 billion pot created by the 2021 infrastructure law, and it pays for both SPARK and the new award announced Tuesday afternoon.
Add TVA’s two awards together and it has nearly $741 million in planned grid investment for more than 4,300 MW of added grid capacity.
The Real Bottleneck
As we just covered, the hyperscalers are fighting over how much of the grid’s bill is theirs, with one telling Senate staff that shared upgrades provide a “system benefit which should be shared among all ratepayers.”
Tuesday’s award is that argument in practice, with taxpayers and utility customers splitting the cost of wires everyone uses, on a national grid where, by the senators’ own count, about a third of transmission and half of distribution infrastructure is “near or beyond its useful life.”
You can build all the combined-cycle gas plants, reactors and geothermal wells you want, and line up every data center and electrified factory in the country to buy their output. If the grid can’t carry the power from one to the other, none of it matters.
