Federal grants totaling $410 million will enhance southeastern power grids, boosting renewable energy, reliability, and economic benefits. However, local efforts must address significant future transmission needs to sustain regional growth and energy demand.

The new energy economy is booming in the southeast, and we’re on the cusp of getting some of the infrastructure we need to keep it growing without increasing reliance on fossil fuels.

Last month, the Department of Energy recently issued a series of grants designed to help improve our national power grid. Two major grants impact our region:

TVA will improve reliability

$250 million went to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and some of TVA’s local utility customers, with the funding directed toward 84 projects that will strengthen the power grid and help foster the growth of renewable energy. The grant is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in 2021 and signed into law by the Biden administration.

According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, which reported on the grant when it was announced, the benefits of the projects will include:

*more than 2,400 MW of new electrical capacity—enough to power more than 1.4 million homes and put new renewable energy projects online;

*a faster and more efficient interconnection queue, meaning new power sources can be plugged into the grid and start providing energy to ratepayers more quickly; and

*the first-ever connection between TVA’s power grid and that of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which operates in the Midwest.

Once operational, these projects will significantly improve the reliability of electricity for customers within the TVA’s footprint, meaning they will face fewer power outages and likely lower prices. This has been too long in coming, but it is a win for families and businesses in the Tennessee Valley. 

During Winter Storm Elliot in 2022, the TVA implemented rolling blackouts while SPP was forced to curtail the ample wind energy they were generating because it lacked the grid capacity. If TVA and SPP had been linked at the time, customers in both regions would have benefited.

The Department of Energy estimates that the TVA project will reduce local power outages by 94% and generate $250 million in economic benefits—in effect offsetting the entire cost of the grant.

Georgia Power’s grid gets enhanced

Another major grant was awarded to Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, in the amount of $160 million to be spent on Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs), including dynamic line rating technology and reconductoring. Both are technological enhancements that will improve power flow through the wires without requiring major new construction.

This grid update is a welcome improvement, though again it’s coming later than it should have. SACE witnesses appeared before the Georgia Public Service Commission in late 2023, arguing that these exact improvements – dynamic line ratings and reconductoring, along with other GETs – should be part of Georgia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP)—a periodically updated road map to the utility’s future activities. The Commission declined to enforce these suggestions, and Georgia Power did not take them on voluntarily. Now the federal government has stepped in to sponsor them.

What comes next

To dramatically understate matters, there is more work to do in Georgia, Tennessee, and across the region. The National Transmission Needs Study estimated in 2023 that the Southeast will need about 6.8 Terawatt-miles of new power lines to keep up with the growing electricity demand in the region within the next ten years (by 2035). The federal dollars are a decent start at offsetting these needs, but it’s unlikely a similar bill will pass under the next administration. Most or all of the remaining effort will need to be local.

Transmission is often seen as technical but its benefits are not abstract. The lights stay on during a brutal winter storm; the bill arrives and you don’t have to struggle to pay it; a new, power-needy manufacturing plant opens and you get a job.

In press releases touting the grant awards, both TVA and Georgia Power cheer the economic and social benefits that will come from the new transmission lines, including new jobs and less pollution. In short, these investments pay for themselves. We can’t afford to stop investing in our community even when the federal dollars dry up.