In its first round of funding for the year, the American Public Power Association’s Demonstration of Energy Efficiency and Development program awarded $457,425 to support five projects, in addition to $42,000 for scholarships and internships. The awards span 16 public power utilities across 13 states.
In Alabama, Huntsville Utilities will receive $125,000 for its Battery Energy Storage System to enhance grid resiliency during extreme weather conditions. The DEED program also approved $120,000 in funding to support Energy Northwest’s (Washington) efforts to equitably deploy advanced reactor and small modular reactor technologies.
Snohomish County PUD (Washington) will receive $75,000 to combat increasing temperatures and reduce summertime loads by designing and piloting a community tree planting program, and $75,000 will also go toward the City of Palo Alto Utilities’ project to create an Electrification Funding Model to estimate the California city’s “community cost to electrify.” Finally, $62,425 in funding was awarded for the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities to create a toolkit to help utilities plan for increased electrification demanded by the transportation sector.
In addition to these utility grants, DEED approved five Lineworker & Technical Educational Scholarships totaling $10,000 and eight student internships totaling $32,000.
When reviewing proposals, the DEED program considers criteria including a project’s applicability to other public power utilities, the development of new equipment or methodologies, the timeliness and transferability of results, and overall benefit to utility operations.
For more information on the DEED program, to become a DEED member, or to apply for a DEED grant, see the APPA website.
