- The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) has released two Notices of Intent (NOIs) to issue funding to support research and development of electric grid technologies.
- This NOFO aims to support grid modernisation and the advancement of clean energy by reducing the cost of high-voltage circuit breaker technology.
The US Department of Energy‘s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) has released two Notices of Intent (NOIs) to issue funding to support research and development of groundbreaking electric grid technologies. Later this year, OE will issue two Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) totalling $13 million to promote a more reliable, resilient, secure, and affordable electric grid.
Upgrading critical systems and controls will extend the life of existing grid components, increase the grid’s ability to receive, transmit, and deliver electricity, and improve communications to help predict and prevent failures. Moreover, quantifying and communicating risk and uncertainties to decision-makers and human operators enables more accurate and effective prediction, prevention, and mitigation of cascading failures in the grid.
“These funding opportunities will advance the development of innovative hardware and cutting-edge software solutions that will increase the reliability and lower the overall cost of America’s electricity transmission system,” said Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary for Electricity.
The funding opportunities will include:
* $8 million Renewable Integration Management with Innovative High Voltage Direct Current Power Circuit Breakers NOFO
* $5 million Human-Centric Analytics for Resilient & Modernized Power Systems NOFO
OE and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) plan to issue the REIMAGINE BREAKERS NOFO to support research and development on high voltage direct current (HVDC) power circuit breakers. This NOFO aims to support grid modernisation and the advancement of clean energy by reducing the cost of high-voltage circuit breaker technology, therefore supporting the widespread adoption of HVDC transmission systems.
HVDC is a key technology that can increase the electric grid’s capacity to receive, transmit, and deliver a large amount of energy from generation sources like wind. It can also be more efficient and reliable than today’s existing solutions. HVDC lines can also lead to improved grid integration of renewables and long-distance electricity transmission to population centres.
DOE anticipates announcing this $8 million NOFO ($7 million from OE, $1 million from WETO) by the end of 2024. The number of awards depends on the number of applications submitted and fund availability. If the NOFO is released, it will be posted at FedConnect.
Preventing and mitigating power grid failures are crucial for reliability and resiliency. This NOFO from OE intends to improve risk assessment and communication for grid operators in the age of big data. Grid transformation trends, including integrating renewable energy and EV charging, are changing long-standing assumptions about power system operations. This is causing significant gaps in assessing and resolving systematic uncertainties in power grids.
Better understanding the impacts on power grid operations requires more advanced analytics to help grid operators predict, prevent, and mitigate cascading failures in power grids. Advanced, physics- and human behavior-aware analytics are critical to addressing new and variable challenges in system dynamics.
These analytics are also important for enabling renewable integration, increasing infrastructure decentralisation, and interdependency under a changing climate. To be effective, uncertainty-informed advanced analytics that extract actionable information from data and knowledge need to consider systems’ physics and human factors.
If the NOFO is released, approximately $5 million in funding is expected to be available to award new cooperative agreements for three-year research and development projects. OE is expected to announce the NOFO by the end of 2024. It will be posted at FedConnect