The Biden administration announced Thursday it will spend $1.5 billion on four power projects, including connecting Texas' isolated power grid to the southeast.
The four projects are expected to improve grid reliability and improve energy access, the Department of Energy said in a press release.
Together, they are expected to enable 7,100 megawatts of new power capacity in Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. it is enough energy Powers over 710 million LED light bulbs.
One of the projects would connect the isolated Texas power grid to power markets in the southeastern United States for the first time, and the grid's lack of connectivity led to severe power outages that ultimately killed hundreds of people. It gained attention after the 2021 winter storm Uri.
Research suggests that connecting Texas to the nation's broader power grid could have prevented some of the outages.
More broadly, the Biden administration has been promoting power lines as a solution to climate change, noting that some renewable projects have struggled to connect to the grid.
“When President Biden and Vice President Harris took office, they laid out a vision to tackle the climate crisis and power our economy with clean electricity. To get there, we will need to double our current transmission capacity. We need to do more than that,” presidential aide John Podesta told reporters on Wednesday.
Federal funding for these projects was provided under the bipartisan Infrastructure Act and follows three previously announced additional projects funded under the same transmission program.
One of the projects is the construction of a new substation in Haynesville, Maine, and 111 miles of transmission lines that will connect the substation to the broader New England power grid.
The other would connect wind and solar energy to demand in eastern Oklahoma.
The fourth project will be located throughout New Mexico and will help power the region's semiconductor and battery manufacturing industries and data centers.
