US DOE invests US$2 billion for grid resilience following Hurricane Helene

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Reddit
Email
Grid infrastructure in the US.
“Extreme weather events continue to stress the nation’s electric systems,” said energy secretary Granholm. Image: ERCOT.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will invest US$2 billion in 38 grid transmission projects across 42 states and the District of Columbia.

The investments will protect the grid from the increasing threat of extreme weather, lower costs for communities and expand grid capacity as demand grows, the DOE said.

This article requires Premium SubscriptionBasic (FREE) Subscription

Unlock unlimited access for 12 whole months of distinctive global analysis

Photovoltaics International is now included.

  • Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
  • In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
  • Unlimited digital access to the PV Tech Power journal catalogue
  • Unlimited digital access to the Photovoltaics International journal catalogue
  • Access to more than 1,000 technical papers
  • Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual

Or continue reading this article for free

The DOE announced the funding shortly after Hurricanes Milton and Helene caused massive destruction in the southeastern US. The DOE said that this round of the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) programme received bids for over seven times the available funding, which it said demonstrated “the tremendous need for these types of investments across the country”.

In its announcement of the funding, the DOE highlighted a number of projects. These included the development of looped transmission feeds in Indiana and Illinois, where grid substations face “increasing outages from extreme weather events and tornados”. Hoosier Energy Rural Electric Cooperative and Southern Illinois Power Cooperative will build new loops to connect with 10 substations in Seven counties across the two states.

Another project will see the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a regional utility in the southeastern US, conduct 84 resilience subprojects across Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. This will add over 2.4GW of transmission grid capacity, reduce TVA’s solar interconnection queue and reduce outage time. The project will include the first interconnection tie between TVA and the Southwest Power Pool, which the DOE said will “provide an anticipated 94% reduction in localised outage durations”.

Overall, the DOE said that the selected projects will add more than 300 miles of transmission lines and upgrade a further 650 miles with grid-enhancing technologies.

A full list of GRIP projects can be found here.

“The devastating and deadly Hurricanes, Helene and Milton, have put on stark display how extreme weather events continue to stress the nation’s aging electric systems,” said US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm. ““The [current] Administration’s Investing in America agenda has provided the largest grid investment in US history.”

White House national climate advisor Ali Zaidi said: “We need our grid better adapted to storms like Hurricanes Helene and Milton – and other extreme climate disasters like the wildfires out west. We need our grid better wired to accelerate America’s manufacturing renaissance and leadership in artificial intelligence…Today’s investment will do that.”

The US grid is proving the key barrier to the expansion of electricity generation capacity across the country. Data analysed by PV Tech Premium earlier this year found that around 1TW of solar projects are waiting in US interconnection queues. Of the major interconnection networks, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) has the largest queue by far, with over 100GW added to the backlog in 2023.

The Texas grid operator, ERCOT, has a smaller queue in spite – or perhaps because – of the fact that Texas recently became the US state with the most deployed solar PV capacity. The ERCOT market has generally faster and more efficient connection processes for solar and storage projects, which PV Tech Premium looked into in discussion with Grid reform expert Tyler Norris.

The DOE has regularly made investments into the US grid, largely through its Transmission Facilitiation Program (TFP). Earlier this month it announced a US$1.5 billion investment to support over 7GW of new transmission capacity in four separate projects.

With the most recent funding, the GRIP programme has now invested a total US$7.6 billion into 104 projects across the country. The project has a budget of US$10.5 billion, which the DOE expects to facilitate around 55GW of grid transmission capacity.

The most recent issue of our downstream journal, PV Tech Power, looked into the challenges facing the US solar and energy storage sectors as a result of the country’s ageing grid, and the ways that the DOE and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) are looking to solve it. (Premium access).

17 June 2025
Napa, USA
PV Tech has been running PV ModuleTech Conferences since 2017. PV ModuleTech USA, on 17-18 June 2025, will be our fourth PV ModulelTech conference dedicated to the U.S. utility scale solar sector. The event will gather the key stakeholders from solar developers, solar asset owners and investors, PV manufacturing, policy-making and and all interested downstream channels and third-party entities. The goal is simple: to map out the PV module supply channels to the U.S. out to 2026 and beyond.
7 October 2025
San Francisco Bay Area, USA
PV Tech has been running an annual PV CellTech Conference since 2016. PV CellTech USA, on 7-8 October 2025 is our third PV CellTech conference dedicated to the U.S. manufacturing sector. The events in 2023 and 2024 were a sell out success and 2025 will once again gather the key stakeholders from PV manufacturing, equipment/materials, policy-making and strategy, capital equipment investment and all interested downstream channels and third-party entities. The goal is simple: to map out PV manufacturing in the U.S. out to 2030 and beyond.
21 October 2025
New York, USA
Returning for its 12th edition, Solar and Storage Finance USA Summit remains the annual event where decision-makers at the forefront of solar and storage projects across the United States and capital converge. Featuring the most active solar and storage transactors, join us for a packed two-days of deal-making, learning and networking.
25 November 2025
Warsaw, Poland
Large Scale Solar Central and Eastern Europe continues to be the place to leverage a network that has been made over more than 10 years, to build critical partnerships to develop solar projects throughout the region.

Read Next

June 10, 2025
Australia’s Queensland government has confirmed an AU$2.4 billion investment in the CopperString transmission project, aiming to extend the National Electricity Market (NEM) to the North West Minerals Province.
June 9, 2025
Solar manufacturer Qcells has launched a recycling arm, called EcoRecycle, and a recycling plant in the US state of Georgia.
June 9, 2025
Growing political headwinds threaten to dent US solar manufacturing and project deployment, despite a strong start to 2025.
June 9, 2025
US residential solar installer Sunnova has laid off more than half of its workforce, while a subsidiary from Delaware filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
June 6, 2025
rPlus Energies has secured more than US$500 million for an 800MW solar-plus-storage project in Emery County, Utah, US.  
June 6, 2025
Eternal Sun has acquired German solar simulator provider Wavelabs, which has resulted in the formation of a new subsidy, Wavelabs Eternal Sun.

Subscribe to Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Solar Media Events
June 17, 2025
Napa, USA
Upcoming Webinars
June 30, 2025
10am PST / 6pm BST
Solar Media Events
July 1, 2025
London, UK
Solar Media Events
July 1, 2025
London, UK
Solar Media Events
September 16, 2025
Athens, Greece