City Secures $28.6 Million Federal Grant to Strengthen Electric Grid

Funds to Aid with Grid Automation and Enhance Reliability

January 08, 2025

Today, the City of Tallahassee announced it secured a $28.6 million federal grant to aid efforts to further strengthen the City's electric grid. This investment will result in an even more resilient and equitable energy system to protect against extreme weather events.

"We have made increasing grant revenue and bringing more money home to Tallahassee a top priority," City Manager Reese Goad said. "I am proud to share that this award brings our total grant dollars secured by City staff over the last five years to $342 million; in comparison, this is 117 percent of the property tax revenue generated during the same time period."

This Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will fund storm hardening and smart grid efforts in the Griffin Heights neighborhood, including a utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS). This will be the City's first utility-scale battery energy storage system, which is estimated to provide an annual system fuel cost savings of $160,000. To be installed at the Birmingham Street Substation (BP-2) in Griffin Heights, this enhancement will improve grid reliability and further support the City's transition to 100 percent net, clean renewable energy.

Other resiliency efforts will include hardening poles and other aerial equipment, as well as implementing automated smart distribution equipment that will address faults and brief outages without the need to dispatch service personnel. Additionally, through this project, the City will engage the Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response (RIDER) Center at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and issue 30 Clean Energy Trades certificates to trainees, among other engagement and workforce opportunities.

"The City is proud to be among the best public utilities in the nation, which can be attributed to our talented team, industry-leading approach and commitment to high-quality service," Mayor John Dailey said. "This project complements and furthers our efforts to enhance electric resilience and reliability while getting us closer to our clean energy goals."

Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the DOE's GRIP program is investing $10.5 billion in communities across the country to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather. Since October 2023, DOE has announced a total of $7.6 billion for 105 GRIP projects in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Learn more about GRIP at energy.gov.

Stay connected with the City of Tallahassee Utilities at Talgov.com.