The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) will funnel US$5.25 billion into 31 “grid-improvement” projects across the US, which it claims will allow for 23GW of additional electricity capacity.
The investment is part of the DOE’s Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades (SPARK) initiative, and is expected to upgrade 1,500 miles of transmission lines and deploy grid-enhancing technology across around 21,000 miles.
Try Premium for just $1
- Full premium access for the first month at only $1
- Converts to an annual rate after 30 days unless cancelled
- Cancel anytime during the trial period
Premium Benefits
- Expert industry analysis and interviews
- Digital access to PV Tech Power journal
- Exclusive event discounts
Or get the full Premium subscription right away
Or continue reading this article for free
The money will fund 31 projects across 26 states, split between small and large utilities, with projects varying from physical upgrades to transmission lines and poles to digital systems and optimisation. A full list of selected projects can be found here.
Of the US$5.25 billion total, there will be US$1.9 billion in federal funding from DOE and US$3.35 billion in recipient cost-share funding.
It will focus particularly on “reconductoring” – replacing existing power lines with higher capacity conductors – which the DOE said can expand grid capacity, increase operational efficiency, lower prices and improve reliability when paired with Advanced Transmission Technologies (ATTs).
“Today’s announcement reinforces the Trump Administration’s commitment to commonsense energy addition policies that lower electricity prices and strengthen our grid,” said US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. “These investments will get more out of the infrastructure we already have, move more electricity across the grid, and help deliver affordable, reliable, and secure power that will fuel American prosperity for decades to come.”
By certain estimates, the electricity demand growth from US data centres will significantly outstrip the additional capacity that the DOE said its modernisation efforts would support. Goldman Sachs estimated that data centre power demand could more than double from 2025 to 2027, hitting 66GW next year.
The DOE said that “maximising existing rights-of-way” in US transmission lines would avoid grid congestion bottlenecks and reduce the need to build “expensive greenfield” projects. It also said it would bypass the “multi-decade” process it claimed was typically required to build new transmission corridors. Last month, the DOE cancelled three Biden-era proposals for new transmission corridors, which it said were part of the previous government’s “Green New Scam” policies around encouraging renewable energy infrastructure.
The department said the grid improvements under the SPARK initiative were in line with President Trump’s January 2025 executive order on “Unleashing American Energy”, the same executive order that paused the disbursement of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) federal funds and instructed government agencies to focus on the development of domestic US fossil fuel capacity.
Grid congestion has been a long-standing issue for the US energy sector. A 2025 study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed that almost 80% of the energy generation projects in US grid queues had withdrawn before being connected, causing issues for projects that are likely to be connected. Last month, a US court upheld Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reforms to the grid connection approval process, which aims to address the mammoth backlog of projects trying to connect to the US grid; as of the end of 2023, there was 2.6TW of new capacity in US interconnection queues, the vast majority of which was solar PV and energy storage capacity.
