Contributed by Paul Moran, Principal Consultant, Black & Veatch’s Global Advisory practice
The Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program is a federal program administered by the US Department of Energy (DOE). It is funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to bolster grid flexibility and resilience through approximately $10.5 billion in investments for the five-year period encompassing fiscal year (FY)22 through FY26.
The program includes projects to increase capacity and create modern technologies to improve the transmission and distribution of electricity. Key goals for the DOE include energy justice, integration of renewable energy, application of data-enabled technology, and investments in grids that support resilience. Important success factors include showing the application of innovative technologies to tackle specific grid challenges in the context of providing quantifiable benefits to the community while addressing energy equity.
GRIP grants include three funding mechanisms, including grid resilience and industry grants ($2.5 billion), smart grid grants ($3.0 billion), and Grid Innovation Program ($5 billion). The first round of funding opportunity awards occurred in late 2023 and the second round of funding was announced in December 2023. Full applications will be due on April 17 for topic areas (1) and (3), with topic area (2) due May 22.
This article includes five best practices based on lessons learned in Round 1.
Tip 1: Focus on DOE-identified priority investment areas
Round 2 priority investment areas include the following:
- Sharing best practices across multiple utility service territories.
- Boosting innovation across all stages of project development and execution.
- Facilitating clean energy deployment, generation diversity and benefits.
- Enabling distributed energy resources (DER) integration through the application of automation, digitization and advanced technology.
- Decreasing interconnection queues to facilitate the construction of clean energy.
- Increasing system resilience related to climate change-induced natural disasters.
- Increasing regional and interregional electricity transfer capacity.
It is crucial that the application clearly shows the connection between one or more of these defined priorities and the intent of the project. Describing in sufficient detail the connection between the needs of the applicant’s grid and its relation to the identified priority area will enable the reviewer to understand how the project aligns with the DOE’s goals.
Tip 2: Describe the issues the project will address
Within the context of the DOE priorities, applicants should consider explaining the issues or challenges the applicant is facing. Describing the issues provides the DOE with the necessary background to understand why the project is necessary and how the funding will provide a positive impact. Although many utilities face similar challenges of integrating renewables or advancing decarbonization, applicants should not leave to the imagination of the reader the unique set of circumstances, customers and grid characteristics that define the service territory and service obligations of the applicant’s utility or agency.
Tip 3: Describe the project objectives
Applicants should clearly state how the project will address the issues by describing the specific objectives of the investment. Submissions that clearly articulate the necessity of the award to solve specific grid challenges by applying pioneering technology to achieve a goal (e.g., improved resiliency, enablement of further integration of renewables, better outage responsiveness and mitigation) will be well received. It is also important to communicate how project goals relating to more than one key priority investment area will be more successful. In general, an application that is more specific about how an innovative grid-enhancing technology deployment will help address a specific issue that your utility is facing will be received more favorably than an application focused on conventional infrastructure upgrades.
Tip 4: Identify how the benefits will be delivered
The ability to name and quantify the benefits to be achieved by the project (e.g., reduction in CAIDI or mitigation of wildfires through improved ability to remotely manage and optimize field assets) is vital. Applicants should apply the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound (SMART) methodology to specify how, when and where the project will advance its goals as well as communicate how the benefits will be achieved and measured.
Tip 5: Identify the beneficiaries
Applications need to carefully explain how the community will benefit from the investment in the Community Benefits Plan (CBP) section of the application. DOE has specified the following four elements to be addressed in the CBP:
- Support meaningful community and labor engagement.
- Invest in job quality and workforce development.
- Advance diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).
- Contribute to advancing energy equity by contributing 40% of the overall project benefits to disadvantaged communities.
Thoughtful and creative approaches to describing how the project will benefit the community are the hallmarks of a successful application. The CBP is evaluated with a 20% weight in the Technical Review Criteria and the DOE stresses that the CBP should describe meaningful actions. This can be accomplished by being specific on how the project invests in disadvantaged communities, advances workforce development, supports DEIA objectives and promotes community and labor engagement.
Key takeaways
Applicants should consider telling a story that begins with a vision, describes how the applicant will deploy the project to solve a specific set of grid issues, and provide direct and measurable benefits with active community engagement.
About the author
Paul Moran is a Principal Consultant in Black & Veatch’s Global Advisory practice. He has two decades of experience in the energy sector in both consulting and in the utilities sector. He has deep functional experience in strategy, business case development, grant management, transformation roadmap, business process design, system analysis, requirements analysis, and change management across grid modernization, asset management and distributed energy resources. Prior to consulting, he worked in the electric and gas utility industry and enjoys leveraging his utility know how gleaned from his experience in working with both in electrical and gas operations, gas marketing and corporate strategy.
