Recovery act funding update
Following DOE’s release of draft Recovery Act smart grid opportunities in April, industry stakeholders and other interested parties have carefully considered the draft provisions and offered substantive feedback to the Department. The GridWise Alliance has been among the most visible groups offering comments and advice on the evolving funding process.
One focus of the Alliance has been the project selection metrics outlined in the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program Notice of Intent (NOI). Specifically, the NOI identifies four distinct smart grid areas that will form the basis of project evaluation and selection. These include:
- area, regional, and national coordination regimes
- distributed energy resource technology
- delivery (T&D) infrastructure
- information networks.
These four areas are derived from prior discussions on metrics held at last year’s Smart Grid Implementation Workshop.
In a May 6 communication submitted to DOE, the GridWise Alliance expressed concern that these areas are too narrowly defined and are likely to be at variance with key features of actual submittals. In the view of the Alliance, many worthy projects submitted for Investment Grant funding will necessarily overlap these different areas, and thus will be rejected under the proposed metrics. To address this flaw in the selection process, the GridWise Alliance “suggests that additional work is needed on refining project selection metrics so that categories not become rigid categories that potentially disqualify deserving projects.”
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has taken up the issue of evaluation criteria on a separate track. Earlier this month, PNNL helped organize a National Smart Grid Conference to devise a national smart grid deployment strategy and to make specific recommendations regarding Recovery Act smart grid funding. At its conclusion, the forum approved a number of steps designed to elaborate a smart grid strategy and promote implementation. In particular, the forum agreed to define “key metrics for success evaluation” as part of its strategy development process. Forum participants selected July 29 as a deadline for drafting evaluation metrics.
DOE expects to release a formal solicitation for the Investment Grant Program on June 17. Three provisional Investment Grant application due dates have also been announced: 7/29/09, 12/02/09, and 3/31/10. DOE also expects to release the final Smart Grid Demonstrations solicitation in the near future, although the precise date is uncertain.
In related news, DOE announced that caps on Recovery Act smart grid funding have been raised. Specifically, the maximum award available under the Investment Grant Program was increased from $20 million to $200 million, and the maximum award available under the Demonstrations program was increased from $40 million to $100 million. The Department reaffirmed its intention to support a wide variety of smart grid projects.
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