The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $14.7 million Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for multi-year research, development, and demonstration of microgrid-related technologies, with the goal to bring microgrid solutions to underserved and Indigenous communities in remote, rural, and islanded regions in the United States.
With this FOA, DOE’s Office of Electricity’s research partners will develop and demonstrate microgrid-enabling technologies, including renewable generation and storage systems, multi-nodal small-scale high-voltage direct current, advanced demand-side management strategies, and microgrid control systems. The FOA also includes opportunities to address non-technical barriers to deployment of microgrids in these communities, such as lack of local technical expertise and supply chain challenges.
“I recently had the opportunity to visit Alaska to learn about the unique needs of the state’s remote communities,” said Gene Rodrigues, Office of Electricity’s Assistant Secretary for Electricity. “I saw firsthand how critical microgrids are to bringing reliable and resilient electric power to the people who live and work there.”
The FOA’s overall goals are:
- Promote microgrids as a core solution to increase grid resilience and reliability.
- Ensure that microgrids drive U.S. decarbonization goals by acting as a point of aggregation for a larger number of distributed energy resources.
- Decrease microgrid capital costs by 15 percent by 2031, while reducing project development, construction, and commissioning times by 20 percent.
The anticipated project period of performance is 24 months, and applicants must register at SAM.gov prior to applying.
