US funds four power grid projects with $1.5 billion By Reuters

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Four electric transmission projects serving the U.S. Southwest, Southeast and New England will receive $1.5 billion in public funding to improve grid resiliency and connect customers with clean energy, a the government announced on Thursday.

Funds for the second phase of the Transmission Facilitation Program come from a bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021 and will enable nearly 1,000 miles (1,609 km) of new transmission lines in Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

“We’re using it to help get big transportation projects off the ground, projects that otherwise wouldn’t get built,” David Turk, the US assistant secretary of energy, said in a call.

The investments will create nearly 9,000 jobs, the Energy Department said.

The first phase of the program, announced a year ago, is to support network projects in the western and northeastern states.

Turk said his department will buy electricity from the lines and then sell it back when new customers come on board.

The projects are:

–Aroostook Renewable Project that will give New England access to wind power generated in Maine

–Cimarron Link a 400-mile (644 km) high-voltage direct current line in Texas that will deliver wind and solar power to growing areas of eastern Oklahoma

–Southern Spirit will build a 320-mile (515 km) line that for the first time connects the Electric Reliability Council’s grid in Texas with grids in Southeast electric markets to prevent outages during extreme weather events such as storm deadly Uri that hit Texas in 2022

–Southline, which will build a transmission line to bring electricity from wind power in western New Mexico across the desert southwest.

The Energy Department said its national transportation planning study found that the U.S. will need to roughly double or triple transmission capacity in the three decades to 2050 to meet growing demand and reliability needs.

It said hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings could be achieved through expanded transportation and interregional planning.