Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $38 million funding opportunity for National Laboratories to advance key research and development priorities needed to build a grid that can deliver resilient, reliable, flexible, secure, sustainable, affordable, and equitable electricity. Funding from this Grid Modernization Initiative (GMI) lab call will be used to develop and support the deployment of concepts, tools, and technologies to better integrate all sources of electricity and energy storage, improve our nation's cybersecurity, and incorporate energy justice and climate data in grid planning and operation. Modernizing the grid is essential to achieving President Biden’s goals of 100% clean electricity by 2035 and a fully decarbonized economy by 2050.
GMI expects to make awards in the following five topic areas. All project teams submitted proposals must include at least two National Laboratories and submissions are encouraged to include substantive participation from external stakeholders such as industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations.
Topic areas
- Topic Area 1: Power and Controls Electronics (PACE). This topic focuses on addressing gaps in ‘smart’ medium-voltage electrical interfaces critical to a modernized grid through development of a medium-voltage power and control electronics sub-system approach that is modular, scalable, and cost-effective.
- Topic Area 2: Cybersecurity for Architectures, Standards, and Practices (CASP). This topic focuses on assessing and/or developing cybersecurity technical architectures, standards, and guidelines to ensure the electric utility infrastructure is protected while transitioning and operating on a decarbonized grid.
- Topic Area 3: Quantum Facilities for Computing, Sensing, and Security (qFACSS). This topic focuses on leveraging existing and near-term quantum computing, sensing, and security technologies to address the grid’s vulnerabilities and the grid’s increasing complexity.
- Topic Area 4: Equitable System Operation and Planning (ESOP). This topic focuses on creating and enhancing methods, tools, datasets, policies, and standards to enable an increased focus on energy justice in grid operations and planning.
- Topic Area 5: Climate Impact on Energy Resources (CIER). This topic focuses on developing the ability to create, understand, and use climate-adjusted future weather data to calibrate the assumptions of future loads and resource potentials, environmental conditions for engineered systems, and piloting the use of climate-calibrated data in real world power sector analytical processes.
This opportunity builds on earlier DOE Grid Modernization Lab Calls which invested over $330 million since 2016, bringing together DOE and the National Laboratories with more than 100 companies, utilities, research organizations, state regulators, and regional grid operators to pursue critical research and development of key grid modernization areas.
GMI is a cross-cutting effort supported by DOE’s Offices of Electricity; Fossil Energy and Carbon Management; Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response; Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Technology Transitions; as well as the Grid Deployment Office. It is also supported by the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, a strategic partnership between DOE’s National Laboratories to bring together leading experts, technologies, and resources to collaborate on the goal of modernizing the nation’s grid.
