2023 Grid Modernization Lab Call

A webinar about the 2023 Grid Modernization Lab Call was hosted on May 15, 2023. Watch the webinar recording.

On April 25, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $38 million funding opportunity for National Laboratories to advance key research and development priorities needed to build a grid that can deliver resilient, reliable, flexible, secure, sustainable, affordable, and equitable electricity. Funding from this Grid Modernization Initiative (GMI) lab call will be used to develop and support the deployment of concepts, tools, and technologies to better integrate all sources of electricity and energy storage, improve our nation's cybersecurity, and incorporate energy justice and climate data in grid planning and operation.

GMI expected to make awards in the following five topic areas. All project teams submitted proposals must include at least two National Laboratories and submissions awere encouraged to include substantive participation from external stakeholders such as industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations.

Topic Areas

Topic Area 1: Power and Controls Electronics. This topic focuses on addressing gaps in 'smart' medium-voltage electrical interfaces critical to a modernized grid through development of a medium-voltage power and control electronics sub-system approach that is modular, scalable, and cost-effective.
Topic Area 2: Cybersecurity for Architectures, Standards, and Practices. This topic focuses on assessing and/or developing cybersecurity technical architectures, standards, and guidelines to ensure the electric utility infrastructure is protected while transitioning and operating on a decarbonized grid.
Topic Area 3: Quantum Facilities for Computing, Sensing, and Security. This topic focuses on leveraging existing and near-term quantum computing, sensing, and security technologies to address the grid's vulnerabilities and the grid's increasing complexity.
Topic Area 4: Equitable System Operation and Planning. This topic focuses on creating and enhancing methods, tools, datasets, policies, and standards to enable an increased focus on energy justice in grid operations and planning.
Topic Area 5: Climate Impact on Energy Resources. This topic focuses on developing the ability to create, understand, and use climate-adjusted future weather data to calibrate the assumptions of future loads and resource potentials, environmental conditions for engineered systems, and piloting the use of climate-calibrated data in real world power sector analytical processes.

Projects

On Aug. 31, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy announced up to $39 million for projects across DOE's National Laboratories to help modernize the electricity grid.