Empire District receives $47.5m from feds to strengthen electric grid, bolster resilience
Empire District, doing business as Liberty Utilities, is the recipient of nearly $50 million dollars to strengthen electric grid resilience as extreme weather events continue to strain the nation’s aging transmission systems.
The Biden administration on Wednesday announced $3.5 billion for 58 projects across the country.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said it was the largest federal investment ever in grid infrastructure, supporting projects that will harden electric systems and improve energy reliability and affordability.
“Project DA will install and integrate 261 new and 49 existing vacuum autoreclosers arranged in 43 clusters, while upgrading telecommunications, poles, and stations for automatic system restoration and improved resilience outcomes. The project’s intended sites across the four adjacent states that the Empire District Electric Company (d/b/a Liberty) serves (Arkansas, Kansas,Missouri, and Oklahoma) include 39 disadvantaged communities (DACs). The project will improve reliability, facilitate direct and indirect job creation, increase local capacity to accommodate renewables, and reduce the impact of outages on homes and businesses.”
The federal spending, combined with money promised by private partners, could result in up to $8 billion in investments nationally to upgrade the grid, Granholm said.
“The grid, as it currently sits, is not is not equipped to handle all the new demand” and withstand natural disasters and extreme weather worsened by climate change, Granholm said at a news conference Wednesday. “We need it to be bigger, we need it to be stronger, we need it to be smarter” to bring a range of renewable energy projects online and meet the Biden administration’s goal of reaching 100% clean electricity by 2035, she said.
Projects funded by the federal Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program will increase the flexibility, efficiency and reliability of electric power systems, with a particular focus on spurring solar, wind, and other renewable energy, Granholm said. The projects also are aimed at fixing problems that may contribute to wildfires and other disasters and will improve reliability by deploying innovative approaches to electricity transmission, storage and distribution, she and other officials said.
The nation’s existing power grids are not built to handle the growing energy demand, a fact that is complicated by the intermittent nature of renewables, since energy isn’t generated when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind isn’t blowing.