Biden administration to invest $3.5 billion for electric grid

The Biden Administration is putting almost $3.5 billion into improving the strength and resiliency of the United States’ electric grid, government officials said on Wednesday.

The money is coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which President Joe Biden signed in November 2021, and Wednesday’s announcement marks the first round of funding out of $10.5 billion that was allocated as part of the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program to improve the nation’s electric gridThe $3.46 billion announced Wednesday will go to 58 projects across 44 states, including some 400 microgrids across the country, the Department of Energy said.

The investments in the electric grid will get more than 35 gigawatts of clean energy onto the grid, the Department of Energy says. For some sense of perspective, a mid-size city needs a gigawatt of electricity, Microsoft co-founder and climate investor Bill Gates said in his book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

The $3.46 billion in government funding announced Wednesday will be joined with $4.7 billion in investments from the private sector, bringing the total amount of catalyzed investment into the grid to $8.16 billion.

“Right now, the U.S. electric grid is the largest connected machine in the world. It’s 5.7 million miles of transmission and distribution with about 55,000 substations,” Jennifer M. Granholm, secretary of the U.S. department of energy, said on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

“And it needs upgrading, clearly,” Granholm said.“Our outdated grid is especially vulnerable to the increasing impacts of the climate crisis. Older equipment can overload during extreme heat and cold when power is needed most,” Landrieu said. “And it’s also more likely to fail when communities are washed out by historic floods, and decimated by stronger storms.”

Investing in the electric grid has direct impacts on the lives of people, Landrieu said.

“What exactly does that mean to the American people? It means that a grandfather in Arizona will be able to cool his home during deadly summer heat. A working mom in Georgia won’t have to worry about a fridge full of food and medicine spoiling and how to afford to replace it. A small business owner in North Carolina will not suffer power outages that cost her thousands of dollars in lost inventory,” Landrieu told reporters.

The program marking federal funding for upgrading the electric grid was popular — the Department of Energy received 700 concept papers or letters of interest from all over the country, a senior administration official told reporters. From there, 300 applications were encouraged to go on to the next stage of the application process and then 58 were ultimately selected.