This Grant Funding Opportunity is administered under the Community Energy Reliability and Resilience Investment (CERRI) Program and is designed to provide competitive grant funding for grid-hardening and grid resilience projects that strengthen and modernize California’s power grid against wildfires, extreme weather, and other natural disasters.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), Section 40101d provides non-competitive funding to states (including U.S. Territories) and Indian tribes to improve the resilience of their electric grids.
For more information on the Federal Funding Opportunity that funds this grant program, please see: Amendment 009 of ALRD DE-FOA-0002736 (BIL – Preventing Outages and Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid Formula Grants to States and Indian Tribes).
The following types of entities are eligible to apply for this funding:
- Electric grid operators
- Electricity storage operators
- Electricity generators
- Transmission owners or operators
- Distribution providers
- Fuel suppliers
- Any other relevant entity, as determined by the U.S. Secretary of Energy and the
California Energy Commission (CEC) prior to the application deadline of this GFO.
2. Groups
Each eligible applicant will fall in one of two groups and must identify to which group it is applying on the Application Form.
Group 1: Large Entities that sell more than 4,000 gigawatt-hours per year (GWh/year)
Group 2: Small Entities that sell 4,000GWh/year or less
3. Eligible Activities
Proposed activities must strictly adhere to the below eligible activities list and aim to improve the reliability and resilience of the electric grid against disruptive events.
- Monitoring and control technologies
- Weatherization technologies and equipment for grid hardening purposes
- Fire-resistant technologies and fire prevention systems
- Undergrounding electrical equipment
- Utility pole management
- Relocation of power lines or reconductoring of power lines with low-sag, advanced conductors
- Vegetation and fuel-load management
- Use or construction of distributed energy resources for enhancing “system adaptive capacity” during electrical system outages, including: (1) Microgrid subcomponents (excluding new generation);
- Battery storage
- Adaptive protection technologies
- Advanced modeling technologies
- Hardening of power lines, facilities, substations, and other systems
- Replacement of old overhead conductors and underground cables
Activities coupled with eligible activities a - l above:
Funding may be used for the training, recruitment, retention, and reskilling of skilled and properly credentialled workers to perform the work required for the activities proposed by applicants. Funding for workforce development activities must be coupled with one of the eligible activities listed above; funds awarded through this GFO cannot exclusively be directed towards general workforce development.
Funding may also be used for engagement activities
- Engagement activities must be directly related to the proposed project and to electric grid reliability/resilience (e.g., community input workshops and/or electric outage preparedness workshops)
There is up to $51,867,013 available for grants awarded under this GFO. The total, minimum, and maximum funding amounts for each project group are listed below.
Group 1: Large Entities
Available Funding
$41,493,611
Minimum Award
$13,831,203
Maximum Award
$20,746,805
Minimum Match Funding
115%
Group 2: Small Entities
Available Funding
$10,373,402
Minimum Award
$5,186,701
Maximum Award
$10,373,402
Minimum Match Funding
33.33%
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