Connected Communities 2.0: Innovations to Manage Growing Transportation, Building, and Industrial Loads to the Grid

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The “Connected Communities 2.0: Innovations to Manage Growing Transportation, Building, and Industrial Loads to the Grid” Funding Opportunity (FOA) issued by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is designed to address major new loads from transportation, industry, and buildings on the electric grid by providing new tools for users, planners, and operators of the electric grid. This FOA has two major topical areas: Connected Communities 2.0, focused on grid edge technical measures in buildings, industry, and transportation to prepare the electric grid for these new loads, and improve the resilience of customers and the grid; and Smart Charge Management (SCM), focused on various unique urban, suburban, and rural use cases to build confidence in SCM as an effective approach for electric vehicles (EVs) to provide flexibility and value to the electric grid. The learnings from these projects should enable electric system planners and operators, strategic planners, regulators such as Public Utility Commissions (PUCs), and other stakeholders to understand and plan for new load growth and peak loads driven by electrification, growth in manufacturing, and new computing developments; and to plan for physical and cyber threats to reliability and resilience, while keeping costs affordable for customers and ratepayers. To achieve this end, the cohort of awarded projects will pursue three primary goals. First, the cohort will demonstrate how smart and coordinated management of EVs and other distributed energy resources (DERs), including the integration of efficiency, smart electrical panels, solar, heat pumps, controls, EV charging, and storage can together provide grid support, reduce system costs, and improve the economics of customer technology adoption, at a scale sufficient to enable confidence in wide-scale adoption. The second goal is to demonstrate approaches that enable acceptance by utilities, PUCs, and communities of smart charge management, grid-edge technical measures and innovative planning strategies as valid methods towards right sizing investments in the distribution system. The third and final major goal for the cohort is to demonstrate approaches towards improved resilience for communities, end-use customers, and the overall grid in the face of growing loads, extreme weather events, cyber threats, and increasing reliance on the electric grid through the use of grid edge technical measures. This FOA will award an estimated $65M, and is a cross office FOA co-funded by BTO, VTO, SETO, IEDO, GTO, and OE. The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. Applications must be submitted through the EERE eXCHANGE website to be considered for award. The applicant must first register and create an account on the EERE eXCHANGE website. A User Guide for the EERE eXCHANGE can be found on the EERE website https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx after logging in to the system. Information on where to submit questions regarding the content of the announcement and where to submit questions regarding submission of applications is found in the full FOA posted on the EERE Exchange website, https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. Please see full announcement at: https://ie-exchange.energy.gov/