DOE awards $250M to Oklahoma as part of $5.25B nationwide grid upgrade
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity this week announced its intention to help fund 31 grid-improvement projects across 26 states as part of the Department’s SPARK (Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades) initiative. The projects will receive $5.25 billion in total, $1.9 billion in federal funding from DOE and $3.35 billion in recipient cost-share funding, to improve grid reliability and lower electricity costs for approximately 100 million Americans. Project recipients are expected to reconductor or rebuild more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines and deploy Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs) across nearly 21,000 miles. Together, these efforts will make over 23 gigawatts of additional electricity capacity available. One of the grants, worth $250 million, is going to the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) to support the development of the Three Corners Connector project. This is a planned 300-mile, high-voltage transmission line with an expected total cost of $832,000. - The Route: The transmission line will run from near Guymon in the Oklahoma Panhandle to Pueblo in southern Colorado. - The Connection: For the first time in decades, it will establish a high-capacity link between the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) grid in Oklahoma and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) grid in Colorado. - Target Timeline: The project is intended to become operational in 2028. Energy Under Secretary Kyle Haustveit spoke with Griffin Media’s Haley Hetrick about the program and more: HAUSTVEIT: “We’re here to celebrate the SPARK Award. And the SPARK Award is across the country. /It’s $1.9 billion of federal funding with 5.25 billion of total investment. It’s unlocking 23 GW of capacity, building out 1300 miles of new transmission, and applying new technologies to over 21,000 miles of transmission, to move electrons more effectively across the United States to drive down costs. We’re here in Oklahoma specifically because it’s a recipient of one of the awards, the Three Corners Connector is connecting from Guymon, Oklahoma to Pueblo, Colorado. It’s going to allow up to 1800 megawatts of new transmission to move electrons between those regions with the ability to expand up to 3000MW. So, significant investment over the next four or so years, it’ll provide about 600 jobs in that region.” HAUSTVEIT: “We go through a series of competitive applications and technical review for all of these funding opportunities. So Oklahoma applied, and they laid out the opportunity. So we rely on industry. You know, we do our best job when we work with industry, because they know their problems better than the federal government will. So the Oklahoma team at OMES put that together in partnership with Grid United, and they put a compelling case together. They identified a need and it passed the merit review and it was a very competitive project. So that’s why we selected this region. The US government doesn’t go round trying to pick where we need to put these things. We put out notices so that industry can tell us where we need to make the best investment, to have the greatest impact on Americans to drive costs down.” HAUSTVEIT: “At the federal level. the country, the state of Oklahoma is very blessed to have Senator (Alan) Armstrong (R-OK) in the seat that he’s in—he is driving the ball forward on permitting reform. And that is a monumental effort. But it will have a significant impact if we can get that bill passed to build projects faster at a lower cost, providing certain certainty and durability to these permits, so that American can build faster. We’ve got over $1 trillion of investment on the sidelines waiting to be put to work in the United States.” HAUSTVEIT: “Nuclear is an incredible fuel source, not only for power generation, but process heat, for petrochem, for medical purposes, for isotopes, for cancer research and treatment. Oklahoma is one of the six finalists for NLIC, the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus. The president has set very aggressive targets. He wants 400 GW, or 300 more gigawatts than we have today of new nuclear generation, by 2050. He set aggressive targets to have three new reactors go critical by this past July 4th, which I’m proud to say we met and exceeded. We took the fourth critical on July 4th, and we took a fifth critical just a few weeks later. And that’s significant. In over four decades, we hadn’t taken a new nuclear reactor to criticality until President Trump stepped in, signed those executive orders, cut the red tape. So what I want to see for Oklahoma and for the entire country is forward-leaning, thoughtful nuclear development.” HAUSTVEIT: “Oklahoma continues to be an innovative state. The shale revolution started just a few hours south of us in the Barnett Shale, but it was driven by companies in Oklahoma. So we’re seeing companies continue to lean in and innovate. The shale revolution transformed our country and our world, but we’re only recovering 10% of the oil that’s in those reservoirs currently.. about 30% of the natural gas. So we’re investing heavily in enhanced oil recovery, enhanced gas recovery. And I’m hopeful and optimistic that some of the companies that unlocked the shale revolution will also unlock the next phase of development in shale.” HAUSTVEIT: “Harold Hamm was an innovator and is an innovator. He’s part of the reason that we unlocked the oil component of the shale revolution, starting in the Bakken and expanding across multiple basins. I think Oklahomans and Americans, and Venezuelans should be proud to have a company like Continental entering their country to develop this incredible resource. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil. That’s about seven times more recoverable oil than the United States has. Yet, they only produce about one tenth the amount currently. So bringing American innovators, American companies, Oklahoma companies into Venezuela is going to benefit Oklahoma, America, Venezuelans and the Americas. So it’s exciting to see companies like Continental enter Venezuela.”
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