$3.4B in Smart Grid Grants Coming Tomorrow?

The Department of Energy is set to announce winners of $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus grants on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

There are hundreds of applications in to DOE's $3.4 billion smart grid investment grant program, which makes up the lion's share of $3.9 billion the department has set aside for bringing two-way communications and information technology to the nation's electricity grids (see DOE Issues Rules for $3.9B in Smart Grid Stimulus Grants). DOE representatives had said winners wouldn't be announced until next week at the earliest, making this a bit of a surprise announcement (see Green Light post).

Add up all the requests to the program, and they come to several times more than the amount available, so there are sure to be some disappointed losers — as well as happy winners — among the smart grid set tomorrow. But with utilities generally picking lots of partners from a relatively small pool of smart grid companies, there may well be enough wealth to go around (see Green Light post).

The GridWise Alliance, a trade group of smart grid companies, is already praising the effect the stimulus will have on business. In fact, waiting for stimulus has kept many utilities from doing much smart grid business at all, according to the industry. That's created a lull that looks likely to break tomorrow.

One interesting question is how closely the DOE will stick to its promise to award about 40 percent of the $3.4 billion in individual grants of $20 million or less — a move to support smaller utilities in their bids for projects. On the other hand, many large utilities have made the maximum $200 million requests to the remaining 60 percent of the program's funding.