GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Consumers Energy to receive a 100-million-dollar federal grant to upgrade Michigan's electric grid.
Last month, Consumers announced a five-year plan called the Reliability Roadmap to limit the number of power outages from any given event to 100-thousand. Greg Salisbury talked about that on West Michigan's Morning News. He is Consumers Energy's Vice President of Electrical Distribution Engineering.
"We were out there competing in the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program with the DOE. And we were one of only six large utilities that got awarded $100 million in matching funds to be a downpayment on the Reliability Roadmap," Salisbury said.
He added that the additional work the federal funding will be used for won't cost customers any money.
That work will be in disadvantaged communities to automate the grid, improve substations and do some underground installations.
"We will add this money to our plan for the automatic transfer recloser loops and line sensors," Salisbury said.
That will allow utility workers to view the electric grid in real time and send crews right to where an outage is, as well as re-route power and have circuits that support each other to minimize outages.
"We'll use this money to go in heavily treat(ed) areas. And,depending on what's most economical, we'll either add new tree-protective conductors or we'll go underground ... We'll improve those vintage substations, and make sure we are energy-ready as these communities start to take advantage of electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, electric water heaters and the other factors that we know are coming."
###