Innovative program equips utilities and grid operators with the expertise and resources needed to build the reliable, resilient, and secure grids required to meet the nation's growing energy demand.
Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation
January 13, 2025
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The Department of Energy (DOE) welcomes the first utilities to participate in the Utility and Grid Operator Technical Assistance program. This innovative program from the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Grid Deployment Office is designed to equip utilities and grid operators with the expertise and resources needed to build the reliable, resilient, and secure grids required to meet the nation's growing energy demand.
"These utilities represent a diverse cross-section of the American grid, encompassing both rural and urban landscapes, and serving millions of customers," said Jeff Marootian, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. "This groundbreaking program, powered by collaboration, will accelerate grid deployment and the integration solutions needed to deliver more affordable, equitable and reliable electricity to communities throughout the country."
The Utility and Grid Operator Technical Assistance program is managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with support from Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The program offers three tracks:
- Key Assist, Interconnection Assistance, and rolling technical assistance. Key Assist provides utilities with up to $1 million of comprehensive technical assistance, including access to facilities such as NREL's Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES), to navigate complex grid integration challenges.
- Interconnection Assistance supports transmission providers and distribution utilities with between $100,000 and $150,000 to focus on short term interconnection needs.
- Rolling technical assistance provides utilities and grid operators with up to 100 hours of subject matter expertise, and applicants are welcome to apply at any time at www.nrel.gov/utility-technical-assistance.
Key Assist Participants
North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives (NCEC) is an electric cooperative utility that seeks technical assistance to expand the uses of distribute energy resources (DERs) installed on Distribution Cooperative circuits throughout the state to improve energy reliability and resilience in response to outages like those caused by Hurricane Helene in the summer of 2024. Key Assist will provide NCEC with tools to model DER performance during long duration system outages across the state’s unique topologies, protection philosophies, and DER interconnection requirements. This technical assistance will also enable NCEC to develop consistent design and control approaches for DERs and inform future investment decisions.
Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC) is an electric cooperative utility that seeks to improve load forecasting and DER integration. Specifically, VEC seeks support building gross and net load profiles over long-term adoption scenarios for all utility circuits, along with their DER composition. In addition, VEC intends to model aggregated gross and net load profiles to determine impacts of its DER forecasts on The Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) transmission system.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is an investor-owned utility that seeks to develop definitions, metrics, and successful practices for energy affordability and public participation in the utility's practices, services, and investments. The project objectives include conducting research and stakeholder engagement; developing guidance for system-wide planning, operations, and evaluation; and providing utilities with direct technical assistance with future planning.
Guam Power Authority (GPA) is a municipal utility seeking technical assistance to support the planning and deployment of vehicle-grid integration (VGI) technologies. GPA’s goal through this technical assistance is to integrate electric vehicles (EVs) and deploy chargers while ensuring grid reliability, optimizing energy usage, and delivering sustainable, cost-effective solutions.
Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) is an electric cooperative utility that seeks technical assistance with developing resource adequacy models, metrics, and performing analysis to minimize the risks of rolling blackouts in the winter months. The technical assistance will include the use of grid operations modeling tools to inform a resource adequacy study with an evaluation of solutions for limiting the risk of rolling blackouts.
Interconnection Assistance Participants
Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) is an electric cooperative utility that's revising and formalizing its interconnection process and standards and seeks assistance with reviewing and revising interconnection procedures, studies, and standards. Specifically, Interconnection Assistance will support GVEA with developing a FERC queue/cluster process, reviewing interconnection studies, methods, and criteria, and determining best practices on IEEE 2800 adoption.
Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) is an investor-owned utility with a complex generation facility planning model technical review process which validates the planning model based on performance standards. HECO seeks technical assistance tuning and validating its inverter-based resource (IBR) project models to reduce the time spent during interconnection studies to reach system-level dynamic stability performance targets. Technical assistance may provide an isolated, real-world system model based on HECO's system to provide future project developers a platform to use a real inverter to identify the best control settings for planning models prior to the interconnection studies.
Through tailored technical assistance, expert guidance, and access to the vast resources at NREL and other labs, the program will enable these utilities to overcome technical and financial hurdles. The learnings garnered will be widely disseminated, paving the way for a national transformation towards a modernized and integrated grid.
Learn more about the DOE's Utility and Grid Operator Technical Assistance and apply for the rolling technical assistance offering at www.nrel.gov/utility-technical-assistance.