LVXXU

Chapter II: Increasing the Resilience, Reliability, Safety, and Asset Security of TS&D Infrastructure
QER Recommendations (continued)
Establish a competitive grant program to promote innovative solutions to enhance energy
infrastructure resilience, reliability, and security: DOE should establish a program to
provide competitively awarded grants to states to demonstrate innovative approaches to TS&D
infrastructure hardening and enhancing resilience and reliability. A major focus of the program
would be the demonstration of new approaches to enhance regional grid resilience, implemented
through the states by public and publicly regulated entities on a cost-shared basis, incorporating
lessons learned from new data, metrics, and resilience frameworks.
• An example of such a project is the NJ TRANSITGRID, which incorporates renewable energy,
distributed generation, and other technologies to provide resilient power to key NJ TRANSIT
stations, maintenance facilities, bus garages, and other buildings. Through a microgrid design,
NJ TRANSITGRID will also provide resilient electric traction power to allow NJ TRANSIT
trains on critical corridors, including portions of the Northeast Corridor, to continue to
operate even when the traditional grid fails. 143 This project received $410 million from the
Department of Transportation in late 2014 and partnered with DOE on project design.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience
Competition, which supports innovative resilience projects at the local level, could also serve
as a model for types of projects to be funded, with a specific focus on energy.
• The grant program should also include incentives to establish mandatory resilience standards
and codes. States, tribes, and local governments with resilience standards in place would be
eligible to receive cost-shared grant funding. Approved state energy assurance plans could
also be a criterion for eligibility.
The estimated cost for this program is $3 billion to $5 billion over 10 years.
Analyze the policies, technical specifications, and logistical and program structures needed to
mitigate the risks associated with loss of transformers: As part of the Administration’s ongoing
efforts to develop a formal national strategy for strengthening the security and resilience of the
entire electric grid for threats and hazards (planned for release in 2015), DOE should lead—in
coordination with DHS and other Federal agencies, states, and industry—an initiative to mitigate the
risks associated with the loss of transformers. Approaches for mitigating this risk should include the
development of one or more transformer reserves through a staged process.
• The staged process should begin with an assessment of technical specifications for reserve
transformers, where transformers would be located and how many would be needed, how
transformers would be secured and maintained, how transformers might be transported, and
whether new Federal regulatory authorities or cost share are necessary and appropriate. These
reserves may include smaller, deployable transformers.
• The analysis under this process should both recognize significant efforts already underway
by industry to share transformers and parts, including planning for surge manufacturing
and long-term standardization of transformer designs, and build on policy work already
underway by Federal regulators.
2-40 QER Report: Energy Transmission, Storage, and Distribution Infrastructure | April 2015