The federal government is awarding $389 million to the New England states for regional electric infrastructure upgrades.Â
State officials announced the funding award Tuesday morning, saying the Power Up New England proposal features upgrades to interconnection points in southeast Massachusetts and southeast Connecticut to prepare the regional for more offshore wind power.
The funding award delivered some good news to the clean energy sector here after the Legislature failed to wrap up work at the end of July on permitting and siting reforms and popular legislation to sharpen the state’s ability to secure more federal infrastructure funds. The state’s only operating offshore wind farm is also offline for now while the federal government investigates a shattered wind blade incident.
The Power Up proposal also calls for a battery energy storage system in Northern Maine capable of continuously dispatching carbon-free electricity for up to 100 hours, which officials expect to be helpful during periods of colder weather.
“We’ve done the hard work to coordinate with ISO New England and developers to ensure we’re making smart, targeted investments to ready our electric grid,” Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said. “DOE’s funding announcement is the perfect crescendo to recent developments in regional transmission policy.”
The proposal was submitted in the second round of the Department of Energy’s $10.5 billion Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program. The maximum awards are $250 million per project, or $1 billion for a project like Power Up with significant transmission investment. In the first round of GRIP, only one project received an award greater than $250 million.
