The US Department of Energy has invited applications from states, tribes, and utilities to take advantage of the $13 billion grip program that has been allotted to expanding and modernizing the US power grid. The U.S. electric grid consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1 million megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 600,000 miles of transmission lines.
The Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds the GRIP (Grid Resilience Innovative Partnership) program. When combined with the Transmission Facilitation program, GRIP represents the largest single direct federal investment in critical transmission and distribution infrastructure.
It’s also one of the first down payments on a more than $20 billion investment under the Biden administration’s Building a Better Grid Initiative. The White House announced a $2.3 billion program that funds grid resilience investments by states and tribes to reduce impacts due to extreme weather and natural disasters.
The $13 billion grip program will unlock billions of dollars of state and private sector capital to build transformative projects that increase the reliability of the power grid and modernize it so that more American communities and businesses have access to affordable, reliable, clean electricity – helping Biden achieve his goal of 100% clean power by 2035.
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The US Department of Energy reports that from independent estimates, the USA needs to expand electricity transmission systems by 60% by 2030, and may even need to triple current capacity by 2050 to accommodate a rapidly increasing supply of clean energy and meet growing power demand for EVs and electric home heating, as well as reduce power outages from severe weather due to climate change.
