Energy Department Invests $7.5M to Enhance Grid Reliability and Resilience through Data Analytics

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) today announced selectees of $7.5 million in funding to support projects that will use cutting-edge data analytics and sensor technologies to advance grid reliability and resilience. The initiative underscores OE’s commitment to ensuring a reliable, resilient, and secure electricity system amid growing integration of renewable energy sources and distributed energy resources (DERs). 

"These projects are essential for making our electric grid stronger and more secure," said Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary, Office of Electricity. "They will help utilities quickly identify and solve problems, ensuring a reliable power supply. We're laser-focused on rapid and widespread implementation to support America’s growing appetite for clean, affordable renewable energy." 

Selected projects will demonstrate advanced monitoring and control capabilities essential for modernizing the nation’s power grid. These efforts will leverage the latest advancements in data analytics to address system challenges and improve overall grid performance. 

Selected Project Highlights 

• Arizona State University: $999,999 to develop sensor data analytics software tools for advanced monitoring and control of power systems with DERs, addressing uncertainties induced by system and weather conditions. 
• Guam Power Authority: $1,000,000 to create a cloud-based real-time monitoring tool to detect and locate grid oscillations and other adverse events in systems with high levels of renewable energy integration.  
• Iowa State University of Science and Technology: $1,000,000 to enhance utilities’ awareness of real-time health conditions of distribution transformers, minimizing service disruptions and improving system reliability and resilience.  
• New York University: $1,000,000 to develop a software tool suite for improving visibility of secondary distribution networks through advanced grid-level data analytics.  
• North Dakota State University: $513,949 to develop a graph-based analytics tool for monitoring and managing stability issues in grids with high inverter-based resource penetration.  
• University of California – Riverside: $1,000,000 to use analytics for data cleaning, event detection, classification, and grid-edge monitoring. 
• University of Kentucky: $999,933 to improve transformer capacity utilization, reduce overloading, and enhance load modeling and event detection to minimize grid outage times.  
• Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO): $1,012,316 to enable dynamic operating envelopes. 

Impact on Consumers and Utilities 

Development and deployment of advanced data analytics technologies on the power grid can increase the electric system’s reliability, resilience, and affordability by helping utilities understand system weaknesses and enable rapid grid interconnections for both load and resources. As a result, this work will help: 

• Keep Your Lights On: Improved grid security and reliability means fewer blackouts and outages for consumers, and faster interconnections for new loads.  
• Keep You Safe: Fewer power disruptions that affect critical services like hospitals, emergency response systems, and public transportation translate to beneficial impacts to public health and safety.  
• Keep Power Affordable: When utilities spend less time and money responding to grid disruptions and better utilize existing infrastructure, customers will benefit from better and more cost-effective service. 

Learn more about OE.