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On December 21, 2012, DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) issued a Notice of Intent (NOI) to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Plains & Eastern Clean Line Transmission Project on behalf of the Department and Southwestern Power Administration.

Presentations from two peer reviews in September are now available.

The Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions (CERTS) Transmission Reliability R&D Load as a Resource (LAAR) Program peer review included five presentations on September 20, 2012, hosted by DOE at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

DOE's Energy Storage Systems Program (ESS) conducted a peer review and update meeting in Washington, DC on September 26 – 28, 2012. The 3-day conference included nine sessions and two poster sessions.

Use of synchrophasor data from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) is considered to be a promising tool to monitor modern electric power systems. However, only a limited number of professionals, researchers, and students have the knowledge and expertise to understand and analyze the high-speed, time-synchronized data that will be generated by the deployment of synchrophasors. 

The objectives of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) are to:

The Department of Energy has released the summary report from the July 30-31, 2012 Microgrid Workshop presented by the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. The workshop was held in response to discussions at the preceding DOE Microgrid Workshop, held in August 2011, which called for sharing lessons learned and best practices for system integration from existing projects in the U.S. (including military microgrids) and internationally. 

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the National Association of State Energy Officials are hosting the 2012 – 2013 Winter Fuels Outlook Conference on Wednesday, October 10, 2012 in Washington, DC.

An article in the September/October issue of EnergyBiz focuses on DOE's Smart Grid Investment Grant program and praises its impact on technology and the workforce in the energy sector. To illustrate the range of the program, the article highlights two grantees: the Western Electricity Coordinating Council's $108 million synchrophasor project in the Western Interconnection, and Talquin Electric Cooperative in Florida, with a $16 million project to upgrade infrastructure and service in an area where until recently customers read their own meters to determine their bills.

The August 2012 issue of The CIP Report from George Mason University's Center for Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security highlights the significance and challenges to securing the smart grid.

The Department is preparing the 2012 Congestion Study now, and is hosting three webinars in August 2012 to receive input and suggestions concerning the preliminary findings of the study. The updated presentation used in the webinars is now available.

The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability has released a report that reviews power outages and restoration efforts following the June 29, 2012 Derecho and compares them to outages and restoration efforts following other spring and summer storms in the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic regions.

View the Report.

Dr. Stanley Atcitty, an energy storage systems researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, has been named a winner of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).  President Obama named 13 U.S. Department of Energy-funded researchers as recipients of the award which is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers, who are early in their independent research careers.