Welch's $700M Microgrid Bill Wins NEMA, GridWise Support
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- Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) introduced the STRONG GRID Act on Wednesday, proposing a $200 million DOE pilot program and $500 million in state grants to accelerate microgrid deployment.
- The STRONG GRID Act would make microgrids and distributed energy resources eligible for state energy program funding and establish state-run grid resilience programs for their deployment.
- NEMA, the GridWise Alliance, and the National Association of State Energy Officials endorsed the bill, with NEMA's Peter Ferrell telling Utility Dive that microgrids are "new to a lot of policymakers and states."
- The $200 million DOE pilot would award competitive grants to projects demonstrating ancillary grid services, aggregating distributed energy into virtual power plants, load transfers to ease transmission congestion, and voltage stability management.
- The $500 million state grant program would fund microgrid feasibility studies, design and engineering, construction of generation and energy storage assets, and advanced cybersecurity systems.
- NEMA forecast in May that annual U.S. electricity consumption will grow more than 55% by 2050, while Welch said the U.S. grid "is under more pressure now than at any point in our history."
Why it matters: State energy offices and equipment manufacturers are aligning behind microgrids as NEMA forecasts U.S. electricity consumption rising 55% by 2050 and grid operators warn of resource adequacy shortfalls. The bill's $500M state grant pool routes deployment decisions through state hands rather than purely federal channels, speeding projects in constrained areas where traditional transmission upgrades take years.
