This contracting action is the second step in a two-step solicitation process to administer the State of New York’s $24 million award from the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office. New York was one of nine states and five tribal nations that were awarded a combined total of $125 million last November as the seventh cohort of Preventing Outages and Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid Grant. 

NYSERDA is using the award as Step 2 in the solicitation process to provide funding for implementation projects to eligible applicants. Municipal utility (MUNI), rural electric cooperative (COOP) or any small grid operator within the State of New York that sells less than 4,000,000 MWh electricity annually will be eligible to apply for funding to support the implementation of eligible projects.   Eligible entities are allowed to apply for PON 5896 without having applied for or received funds from Technical Assistance Technical Assistance Funding to Develop Grid Modernization Projects (PON 5737). Previous application and/or award of technical assistance funding from PON 5737 does not guarantee award for federal implementation funds and vice- versa.

Proposers’ intended projects must fall under one of the DOE approved project types: 
•    Adaptive protection technologies 
•    Advanced modeling technologies 
•    Hardening of power lines, facilities, substations, or other systems 
•    Monitoring and control technologies 
•    Relocation of power lines or reconductoring of power lines with low-sag, advanced conductors 
•    Replacement of old overhead conductors & underground cables 
•    Use or construction of DERs for enhancing system adaptive capacity during disruptive events, including microgrids and battery-storage subcomponents 
•    Weatherization technologies and equipment

Applicants who are chosen for awards must supply a cost match that is 1/3 of the amount of the award value. Those who chose to utilize the funding for technical assistance can decide to use the information generated by the technical consultant to apply to the step two implementation funds in this grant cycle or hold off to subsequent years.