Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas Fixed Award Grant Project Selections National Briefing

[Music] good afternoon everyone my name is Todd Shader I'm director of project management here in the department of Energy's office of clean energy demonstrations or Ed uh thank you for joining us today to learn about our exciting projects in the energy improvements and Rural and remote areas program commonly known as erra uh within the osed portfolio uh this program is ultimately about helping meet the climate goals of of our nation and ensuring that every American in particular today Rural and remote Americans can unlock the benefits that come with it the transition to a clean energy future next slide please so just a little about logistics today um you can turn on live captions by clicking on show captions in your control panel you can also turn on Spanish and ASL interpretation uh by clicking the interpretation button in your control panel and then finally you will be able to find a recording of This webinar and a copy of the presentation slides on our website in the next few days and I'll leave the slide there for a second for everyone to see it so as many of you know uh Rural and remote communities face very unique challenges when it comes to energy particularly high energy cost lower reliability uh in fact 84% of all households without reliable electricity in United States live in rural areas this program is designed to address the distinct challenges these communities face and in particular was designed for communities with a population of 10,000 people or less today the team's excited to be speaking to you about 19 recently selected projects that will accelerate the clean energy deployment in Rural and remote communities across this nation in this presentation we're going to share a little bit more about the offs of clean energy demonstrations o that as I said uh spend some time talking about each of the selected projects in this round of funding and some upcoming opportunities for engagement while we are not taking live questions today we do invite feedback through our email address and we will be that we will provide at the end of this presentation uh in addition in the coming weeks uh osed will host three virtual Regional briefings with the project teams themselves uh to hear directly from local communities through and that include a Q&A section uh session details on these briefings will be sh shared a little bit later in this presentation next slide please so uh a couple days ago Tuesday we announced uh $78 million for 19 community-driven projects in 12 States and 13 tribal Nations uh these projects will help cut energy costs enhance resiliency and support Local Economic Development the $78 million ing grant funding made possible by the bipar and infrastructure law empowers communities to develop uh unique and tailored energy projects to meet their needs uh these include removing barriers that prevent many communities from accessing Federal funding uh uh the program was designed to uh allow this to allow communities uh to access to Federal funding and and most importantly because these are small communities we did not require a cost share associated with this so it's a 100% cost share or government paid grant for these projects uh they will uh be a number of diverse and Innovative uh Clean Energy Technologies including solar wind heat pumps micro grids and electric thermal storage uh the grid improvements or they also include grid improvements battery energy storage systems and energy efficient upgrades um just a couple examples fiber project use micro grids and Associated solar or other energy sources to displace uh diesel fuel uh reducing costs greenhouse gas emissions and other risks that come from the use of diesel fuel such as fuel spills for the transmission and distribution projects help to improve energy reliability uh and increase the capacity for future use of renewable uh or Renewable Power and reduce environmental and health impacts for the communities all of these projects uh will increase the reliability of the electricity this area and many of them will help to reduce overall costs of energy uh for the communities in addition part of our project is to demonstrate projects that are scalable and or replicable and many of these I think we will see have the ability to be replicated in future applications uh in addition uh as part of this commitment uh for these projects uh they were to support good paying jobs uh advanced environmental energy Justice and strengthen energy sovereignty uh each of the applications uh included discussions about the community benefits associated with these projects uh and we'll touch on each of these as we go through the projects uh going further uh furthermore these 19 selective projects benefit surrounding communities uh and many of them if not all are all considered disproportionately overburdened by pollution or historically underserved the ra program helps to ensure that this clean indry transition makes energy more accessible and affordable for all Americans and these projects demonstrate this to Rural America and in particularly Rural and remote communities uh associated with uh or the leadership in these communities next slide please so let's just take a a very deep dive and quick dive into osed and the energy Improvement en roller mode areas uh so next slide please just briefly oset itself and then we'll go specifically into our program uh we were established in December 2021 by the infrastructure investment and jobs act iiga uh but it's more commonly known as the B bipartisan infrastructure law or bill and it's a mission you can see there by our mission statement was to scale Energy Technologies to tackle the pressing needs of the country uh associated with climate change uh specifically it's to demonstrate projects at scale in this case smaller scale being world and remote projects uh and Partnerships uh with the private sector where possible uh but to incur market adoption and include an equitable transition and hence uh my my comment about many if not all of these projects are in areas with that have been underserved in the past uh it's also a key part of the mission to ensure that this is uh an equitable transition and key to that is investing of projects in the safest and most transparent way possible and getting Community input and to uh what the project looks like how it shapes specific Ed funding um and how we approach to build out the clean energy industry next slide please so with that let's uh get into the projects themselves I'll pass it on to Regina gayer she's our program manager for the ER program and she'll take a deeper dive into all of these projects Regina thank you Todd and thank you to the team for pulling this together and especially thank you to all of us who have joined us here today we're grateful for your time so Todd referenced the bipartisan infrastructure Bill law bipartisan infrastructure law commonly referred to as Bill in December of 2021 the bill authorized Department of energy to invest a billion dollars into this erra program so this program is within that office of clean energy demonstrations that Todd just described and then the next level is the Department of energy so you can see the organizational hierarchy but the purpose of our erra program is to provide financial assistance in rural or remote areas of the United States those areas that have fewer than 10,000 people and generally we say that we want to improve resilience safety reliability and even availability of energy we also want to improve Environmental Protection from the adverse impacts of energy generation so we say that we have three General goals for our program that you'll see on this slide on the right number one we aim to deliver measurable benefits to energy customers in those R and remote areas by funding replicable energy projects you'll hear us emphasize ize replicability and resiliency a lot but we hope that these replicable projects could lower costs improve access and resilience and reduce environmental harm the second grouping or the second goal that we emphasize is that we will support new roller remote system models that use climate resilient technologies that use business structures promoting resiliency new financing mechanisms for clean energy generation or new community engagement practices all important emphasis of the program and of the bill and the third major goal that we emphasize is that we aim to build clean energy knowledge capacity and self-reliance in Rural and remote America Next slide please so a little bit about this specific funding opportunity it was a year ago in May of 2023 that we announced this $50 million grant funding opportunity within the ER program so we will say and based on a lot of groundwork communications engagements webinars we built this funding opportunity based on what we heard rural communities feedbacks uh throughout the us so we aim through this opportunity to simplify the application process based on uh much demand a lot of information about that remove the cost share requirement a lot of people noted that how much that would simplify and enable them to access and apply for the funding we're offering technical assistance and we aim to reduce the financial reporting requirements so after we launched that funding opportunity in May of last year we put out the initial application Phase as a pre-application form and we received 659 eligible pre-applications in those applications the applicants proposed a real diverse array of Technologies and they applied from every region of the country so out of those 659 we invited 59 pre-applications and those pre-applications were invited to submit full applications that was the second part of our application process and as Todd referenced on Tuesday we announced 19 project selectees they were selected projects for award negotiations and we would say these 19 as well this subset show the breadth and diversity of Clean Energy Technologies so we're happy to share that because of the competitiveness and and the high quality of the applications that we received we increased the funding amount on this estimated $50 million FAA to $78 million $78 Million worth of project selections and that uh we hope we would move into award next slide please so the goal of the 19 projects is to address the unique challenges in rural remote communities by deploying this range of Clean Energy Technologies and you will see among the Technologies here solar photovoltaic technology it's one of the fastest growing and the most affordable sources of new electricity across the country grid improvements through upgraded high capacity transmission lines that would help modernize the resilience of the grid micro grids they're localized electric grids that can disconnect from the main grid and offer autonomous to operate and they strengthen resilience they help mitigate grid disturbances and lastly Energy Efficiency upgrades which would promote the comfort for homeowners and ultimately we hope lower operating costs for businesses in summary the selected projects will support diverse and replicable Clean Energy Technologies improve access and resilience lower burden and and reduce greenhouse gas emissions develop the rural remote Workforce and Empower ultimately the communities that benefit from the projects next slide please so looking at this map of the lore 48 we have mentioned uh that osed selected the 19 ER projects for award negotiations the projects are Geographic ially diverse as you can say uh so I want to start by sharing where the projects are proposed to be located here in this map um across the continental United States and please note that the star icon and so maybe this will be in a separate map I will keep going let's go to the next slide okay so here's the Alaska map it's deeper look at the projects that were selected out of this foa across Alaska and again we would say that this map helps exemplify how we hope to support some of our country's most remote communities we will get into and describe all the projects next slide please so on community benefits plans each project was required to develop a community benefits plan intended to ensure that the local communities and workers who are engaged in the project from the outset and helping ensure that concrete benefits are identified so we'll provide robust project management oversight of the community benefits implementation throughout the Project Life Cycle working closely with the select EES and ultimately we hope award e next slide so a little more on community benefits the four pillars of Community benefits include community and labor engagement diversity equity and inclusion and accessibility investing in the American Workforce and the justice 40 initiative so our engagement the osid programs engagement with communities will kick off during negotiations during which time we'll work with the selectees to strengthen Community benefits and incorporate input and more importantly Community benefits are meant to be adaptable as a project progresses we know lessons will be learned and as Community input is received we will work with selectees to try to ensure continuous evaluation and potential updates next slide please so with that I will transition to what you're all here for and that is to talk about the actual proposed projects so while we'll only provide a brief overview of the projects you you can find more information by visiting our ER program website and my colleague has just dropped the website link in the chat next slide please okay so starting on the Adams Electric Cooperative and I'm just going to ask uh thank you in advance for your patience with me and uh sorry in advance if I mispronounce any names the Adams Electric Co-op uh proposes to install a megawatt wind turbine along with one megawatt of solar to eliminate potentially 40,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually project is expected to reduce energy costs by more than $200,000 annually for the 7500 rural community rural families who are members of the cooperative and that's across seven remote Illinois counties with the grant the project would invigor reinvigorate disadvantaged communities they hope U those are affected by Coal Mine disclosures and they also hope to enhance renewable energy production next slide please clean energy and efficiency for Dallas County Alabama schools the Dallas County Alabama Board of Education seeks to retrofit about nine schools across their district and many of which were constructed in the 1950s they would upgrade hbac units Lighting systems and building controls using Smart Technologies three of their schools also could receive approximately 353 kilowatt rooftop solar PV systems so those systems would directly power their facilities and these upgrades would help remedy air quality issues they hope improve comfort and health conditions in the schools and support Better Learning environments ultimately for thousands of K through2 students in historic Selma and around Alabama's surrounding rural communities next slide please the coste effective and Equitable Cooperative Community solar in Western mate this project proport proposes to install 150 kilowatts of solar ar ar raay at six sites across Western Main they hope to reduce energy costs for Consumer and worker owned Cooperative members at least 50% of the project beneficiaries are in low-income households and the project expects to reduce electricity costs between 20 to 40% next slide please decarbonizing the tongas with tribally owned heat pumps situated in the middle of the largest temper rainforest in the world and one of the Earth's last old growth forests Prince of Wales island is a remote location it's only accessible season seasonally and by a bush plane or ferry so this project proposes to install air source heat pumps in approximately 240 tribal buildings they would help reduce resident Reliance on and emissions from fossil fuels the tribally owned project could be powered by existing clean hydroelectric resources potentially offering affordable rates for the residents and the select e Spruce rout plans to provide local Workforce Development and training around the heat pump installation and maintenance next slide please East Central Community College solar and lighting upgrades to meet Peak energy demands East Central Community College proposes to install a megawatt of solar generation to serve 38 campus facilities and to upgrade 25 facilities with energy efficient LED lighting the integrated project is expected to reduce the college's annual energy cost by $170,000 and part of the effort the college is developing one of the first Community College solar installation and maintenance curriculum in the state of Mississippi next slide please this project titled green care empowering resilience in podu located near tornado Tornado Alley the Chua nation of Oklahoma's poto campus has averaged three outages a year since 2018 due to severe storms this project proposes to create a micro grid with 2.1 megawatt hours of battery energy storage and that would provide backup power during the outages for a health clinic Child Development Center and Food Distribution Center so the project aims to upgrade seven of the buildings on the campus with efficient LED light fixtures and Environ um Energy Management systems that would save and estimated $140,000 in electricity costs each year next slide please this project titled grid access and resiliency for un serve Rural and Indigenous people the project proposes to extend underground electric distribution lines 30 miles into areas of Northeast Washington that are classified as disadvantaged by the climate and economic Justice screening tool so by upgrading the strawberg substation up to 190 so between 100 35 and 190 unserved homes would have access to electrical service for the first time providing firsttime grid access would not only reduce local dependence on harmful diesel generators but the households would have power for modern Necessities like Heating and Cooling Refrigeration lighting and access to the internet things that a lot of us take for granted But ultimately can increase overall Economic Opportunity in their area next slide please the high penetration solar battery project in amer Alaska so located 45 miles north of the Arctic Circle 27% of the residents in this traditional inup Village they live below the poverty so the project aims to upgrade an existing power plant to allow for a 400 kilowatt solar PV system and a 500 KW hour battery storage system system The Village plans to own and operate renewable generating assets separately producing nearly a quarter of the community's electricity so when fully integrated the Clean Energy System would increase the resilience of the islanded microgrid and de decrease uh diesel use by more than 20,000 gallons annually and that uh they hope would allow The Village's diesel generators to be turned off for the first time in more than 40 years next slide please this project titled cockx Paradigm Shift big battery as our systems energy backbone so like many villages that are only accessible by Bol and plane cockn Village of 170 people mostly indigenous residents use diesel to supplement other power sources so this project would upgrade konok Alaska's micro grid with a 9 43 kilow hour storage system and a solar PV a wind turbine and a electric thermal storage Heating units so with all these upgrades the project proposes to significantly increase microgrids reliability and resilience they hope displacing 70% or more of Village fossil flu use within the first two years and ultimately allowing for scaling to meet anticipated demand that will be driven by population growth electric vehicle use and more prevalent heat pumps next slide please Lake City area power and resiliency augmentation Enterprise so during the past two years this area of rural Colorado experienced SE 76 outages due to extreme weather and wildfires including one 128 hour outage during a Subzero overnight temperature temperatures so the proposed project plans to replace 30 miles of aged overhead electric distribution lines enhancing local grid resilience while reducing costs for operations and maintenance the upgrades would also prevent additional fires they hope that would be caused by overloading and and facilitate the integration of more renewable energy next slide please all right thanks for hanging in there with me this is a project titled Navajo sun power home solar project Navajo communities have some of the best solar resources in the country yet a significant portion of Navajo Nation homes don't have reliable access to electricity and thus they lack essential services like Refrigeration medical device usage and internet access so this project plans to install 375 kilowatts of solar PV with battery storage systems on approximately 75 off-grid Navajo Nation homes they're located far from the grid and other community structures and that distance has delayed electric service to these households so the PV and Battery Systems would allow homeowners to participate in Navajo Nation and Indian Health Services programs that subsidize other Home Improvements which require electricity next project please all right the new stoah hok solar battery rural yic villages in the remote Dillingham region of South Southwest Alaska face unique challenges being isolated from major Road and Power Systems so the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative aims to construct a 500 kilowatt solar PV array a 40 KW hour battery energy storage system and a microgrid controller leveraging their abundant summer daylight hours to produce energy for two remote indigenous communities the clean energy generated will displace nearly a quarter of fuel consumption at the existing Diesel power plant that serves these communities which in turn they hope would improve air quality and lower the potential for spillage on the new Shaka River next slide please yuz zinki independent power energy Improvement project this project in yuz zinki proposes to construct 160 kilowatt of solar PV and 210 kilowatt hours battery storage for a new microG Grid in the remote Alaska native Village this they hope would offer reliable resilient backup power during severe weather outages the Technologies represent a cost- effective and low-maintenance renewable energy option for this community of 128 indigenous residents who fish haunt and pick berries for sustenance they need electricity for modern refrigeration for these resources to last during the off season the project expects to reduce electricity costs by 10% next slide please all right this project called permanent high quality clean energy access for Rural indigenous communities as I previously mentioned Navajo communities have some of the best solar resources in the country but yet thousands of their homes lack access to the electric grid this project would install 568 kilow of solar PB and 1,769 kilowatt hours of battery storage and approximately 350 currently offgrade homes Across the Nation approximately 140 of those economically vulnerable homes would receive service at a reduced rate that should enable residents to access high quality zero carbon electricity next slide please the ravali electric Community storage project this project aims to install a battery energy storage system at the Woodside substation that substation serves two communities that are sub subject to extreme winter weather as well as Wildfire risks so the system would provide clean backup power during outages to the corresponding volunteer fire departments and also a local school that's used as a community shelter the system could also uh ultimately distribute energy during peak times that would help reduce high demand charges on residents bills and decrease greenhouse gas emissions from local power plants next slide [Music] please all right all right reliability and cost Effectiveness in rural areas using environmentally sound practices this project aims to improve grid reliability in Three Counties by addressing two critical issues inefficient fuses and vegetation management so the fuse es will be replaced with self-restoring reclosers which will better protect the Utility Equipment from Electric overload and short circuit damage they could produce or uh reduce outages by up to 80% project would also strategically clear unwanted vegetation along the power line RightWay and replant the area with Native species creating sustainable habitats for local wildlife and potentially saving $50,000 in maintenance costs annually next project please next slide all right this is the REMC transmission line rebuild so particularly in areas facing economic distress access to Reliable and affordable and resilient energy is critical for Community R vitalization so with this grant the Randol Electric Membership Corporation would replace 21 miles of deteriorating wooden transmission point PS with galvanized steel poles through four Central North Carolina communities the existing poles have been damaged by wildfire and other natural hazards and their upgrades would improve infrastructure durability and longevity next slide please this is the rural rebuild and Rec conductores of age power distribution lines and connect a TW mile tie line with Petersburg substation the upgrades would increase grid reliability and resilience for 3,000 customers in Three Counties of rural West Virginia the Project's higher voltage lines would enable mananga Hala power company to restore service faster after an outage next slide please thanks for hanging in with me this is the best part is hearing about the projects 10 across solar PV and to battery storage battery energy storage system so this project plans to install 1.5 megawatts of solar PV on the grid at the Alaska power and telephone power plant that provides electricity to federally recognized tribes in tanacross tlin and Dot Lake paired with 1.5 megawatt hours of battery storage in to Alaska the project is expected to displace more than 125,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually thereby improving air quality and reducing noise pollution in local communities the proposed project would generate more than 380,000 re dollars in revenue for Tanana Chiefs conference which they hope would be used to cover operations and maintenance costs and establish a reserve fund for replicating similar projects across the interior of Alaska thank you for hanging in there with me and thanks to all of our applicants and selectees for these awesome projects I'm gonna pass it back over to Todd Trader thank you Regina and well done getting through all of those um so next and final part of our presentation today is just talk a little bit more about getting involved in the projects uh and where we can get community input and how communities can be involved so next slide please um so if you've watched some of our other presentations in this area our national briefings in their various projects uh you've seen this slide a slightly different format uh we talked about many phases uh in these projects because they're a little bit more straightforward uh smaller in size uh smaller in cost uh we're going to have probably streamlined processes uh to get the projects built uh that by no means uh will we eliminate Community input but we probably won't use the sort of four-phased approach that you've perhaps seen before however each step of a project always has Planning Development construction operations uh whatever you're doing and in those steps we will look to have Community input uh in discussions of community benefits uh Andor Community benefits associated with those uh steps in the project going forward the uh right now we're just at the beginning the process so the negotiations are are just starting uh we hope to move them along quickly but they take a little bit of time to get through uh as we keep going uh again the projects had initial Community benefits uh uh proposals and we'll be looking at those and um as we move forward here we've listed again a few of the ways and a few of the places we believe there will be chances to have impact and to re uh uh reach the project teams or or Os said directly uh going forward probably the best one I'll talk about a little bit more in a second is the virtual briefings uh that we have coming up uh again we consider what we hear uh in the negotiation process um during the and in fact during the regional briefings themselves there will be an opportunity for attendees to ask questions directly of the projects and excuse me and raise their concerns next slide please uh so I mentioned these briefings a couple times uh and these on the website as we post these slides uh for more information but uh these will be virtual briefings uh three of them uh Regional so you know Regina went through uh quite a few different projects all across the nation and so to to Aid in sort of uh uh getting local community input we've broken it up into Eastern region of of the continental US the western region and Alaska and you see the times there uh in the dates and uh information to register is in the link there uh next slide please uh another key piece of any project the government does and any action the government does is NEPA National Environmental Policy Act and this requires us to uh evaluate the impacts uh of all our projects and to obtain public input into those projects themselves uh there are three uh potential uh types of NEPA that can comply to this and we're right now just uh looking at which of these would be applicable which are the correct ones categoric exclusion environmental assessment or environmental impact statement we're just at the beginning of the process so uh more to come on that but uh you can see where the uh sum of the public input is associated with each of those projects and again these slides will be available uh to study a little bit more uh in the future uh and I believe uh a link is just been dropped in the chat for this also next slide please uh so questions you know I want to be sure you can reach us uh and raise any concerns you have and you can see the email on the screen there uh that is looked at every day we have people uh reviewing it uh and we're ENC ensuring that your voice is heard in this process and we look forward to getting your perspectives going forward also a great way to keep up with things is to sign up and receive the osed news and updates uh and you can see the information there uh it's probably the best way to know what's going on across all of Ed in all of our projects and again this information will be posted in various formats uh finally uh last slide please uh so appreciate everyone taking the time for us to talk today about these exciting projects uh going forward uh and we hope you uh you know learned a little bit more about the projects about osed and we look forward to particularly the regional briefings that are coming up and again any questions our email is there please reach out uh but I'll say thank you and have a good rest of your day [Music]