The Energy Department is sending about $967 million to states and tribes to harden power grids

The U.S. Department of Energy says it is sending about $967 million in additional funding to states, territories and tribes through its Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grant program, money meant to harden the electric grid against disruption. The announcement carries an Oct. 8 publication date and was updated on Oct. 20, and it frames the awards as support for locally driven projects.

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The release does not name individual projects, and it does not say how many states, territories or tribes share the total. What it does lay out is who is eligible, how the money moves and what Energy Department leaders say it is for.

Formula grants and the FedConnect process

The funding comes through the Energy Department’s announcement of new grid investments, which describes the money as formula grants rather than competitive awards. Eligible recipients are states, territories and federally recognized tribes, and each can see its allocation and application instructions on FedConnect under funding opportunity DE-FOA-0002736. Because the awards are formula-driven, a recipient does not have to beat other applicants for its share; it has to file a compliant application.

The department’s program page says the allocation formula weighs population, land area, the probability and severity of disruptive events, and each locality’s past spending on mitigation. Funds are distributed over five years, and the page lists a fiscal 2025 and 2026 application period that closes Feb. 17, 2027. Per-recipient figures sit in a linked allocation table rather than in the announcement itself.

The dates deserve a careful read. The announcement page shows Oct. 20, 2026, but its metadata gives an original publication date of Oct. 8 and a later modification on Oct. 20, so the funding news first surfaced earlier this month and was refreshed this week. The application window on the program page runs to Feb. 17, 2027, which leaves recipients roughly four months from the Oct. 20 update to file. Nothing in the release indicates that any state or tribe has yet received a payment.

Eligible projects and the exclusions

The announcement describes the aim in broad terms: modernizing critical energy infrastructure, improving grid reliability, lowering electricity costs and meeting growing demand. It says projects can upgrade infrastructure, guard against disruptive events, improve system performance and deploy technologies that lower long-term delivery costs.

A January 2024 program fact sheet gives the concrete menu. Eligible work includes hardening power lines and facilities, vegetation and utility pole management, weatherization, relocating or undergrounding power lines, monitoring and control technologies, and technologies that let distributed energy resources connect to the grid. The same fact sheet excludes new generating facilities, cybersecurity measures and large-scale battery storage unless the storage is used to improve a system’s ability to adapt during a disruptive event.

That fact sheet also carries the program’s size and rules at the time: $2.3 billion in total funding over a five-year program, a 15% cost match from grant recipients, and a basis in section 40101(d) of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Sub-grant recipients face their own match, either 100% of the sub-grant amount or one-third for entities that sell 4,000,000 megawatt-hours or less of electricity per year, a lower bar for smaller electricity sellers. The $967 million announced this month is therefore an additional tranche inside a long-running program, not a new initiative, and readers should treat the 2024 totals as a snapshot rather than a current ledger.

Wright and Jereza on the purpose

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright cast the money in cost terms. “Lowering costs and unleashing prosperity are top priorities for President Trump,” Wright said in the announcement, tying grid spending to what households and businesses pay for electricity. The release’s own language follows the same logic, describing locally driven projects that upgrade infrastructure and guard against disruptive events while lowering long-term delivery costs, which is the cost case Wright is making for the program as a whole.

Katie Jereza, the assistant secretary for the Office of Electricity, put the emphasis on reliability. “A strong and dependable grid is the backbone of American economic prosperity,” Jereza said. The Office of Electricity administers the program with support from the National Energy Technology Laboratory, whose formula grants hub is where the department’s grant materials for the program are organized.

The program page says its purpose is to strengthen and modernize the power grid against wildfires, severe storms and other natural disasters, with priority for projects that deliver the greatest community benefit through affordable and reliable energy. Eligible recipients include Alaska Native regional and village corporations as well as federally recognized tribes, which matters because tribal allocations can be small. The 2024 fact sheet put fiscal 2024 tribal awards in a range from $84,000 to $5.1 million.

What remains unpublished in the announcement is the split: how much each state, territory and tribe receives from the $967 million, and which projects they choose. Those details live in the allocation table linked from the program page and in the sub-awards recipients make later, so the practical effect on outage risk will show up in state-level project lists over the coming years rather than in the federal release.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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