The new energy economy is booming in the Southeast, and we’re on the cusp of getting some of the infrastructure we need to keep it growing without increasing reliance on fossil fuels.
Last month, the Department of Energy recently issued a series of grants designed to help improve our national power grid. Two major grants impact our region:
TVA will improve reliability
$250 million went to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and some of TVA’s local utility customers, with the funding directed toward 84 projects that will strengthen the power grid and help foster the growth of renewable energy. The grant is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in 2021 and signed into law by the Biden administration.
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, which reported on the grant when it was announced, the benefits of the projects will include:
*more than 2,400 MW of new electrical capacity—enough to power more than 1.4 million homes and put new renewable energy projects online;
*a faster and more efficient interconnection queue, meaning new power sources can be plugged into the grid and start providing energy to ratepayers more quickly; and
*the first-ever connection between TVA’s power grid and that of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which operates in the Midwest.
Once operational, these projects will significantly improve the reliability of electricity for customers within the TVA’s footprint, meaning they will face fewer power outages and likely lower prices. This has been too long in coming, but it is a win for families and businesses in the Tennessee Valley.
During Winter Storm Elliot in 2022, the TVA implemented rolling blackouts while SPP was forced to curtail the ample wind energy they were generating because it lacked the grid capacity. If TVA and SPP had been linked at the time, customers in both regions would have benefited.
The Department of Energy estimates that the TVA project will reduce local power outages by 94% and generate $250 million in economic benefits—in effect offsetting the entire cost of the grant.
Georgia Power’s grid gets enhanced
Another major grant was awarded to Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, in the amount of $160 million to be spent on Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs), including dynamic line rating technology and reconductoring. Both are technological enhancements that will improve power flow through the wires without requiring major new construction.
This grid update is a welcome improvement, though again it’s coming later than it should have. SACE witnesses appeared before the Georgia Public Service Commission in late 2023, arguing that these exact improvements – dynamic line ratings and reconductoring, along with other GETs – should be part of Georgia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP)—a periodically updated road map to the utility’s future activities. The Commission declined to enforce these suggestions, and Georgia Power did not take them on voluntarily. Now the federal government has stepped in to sponsor them.
What comes next
To dramatically understate matters, there is more work to do in Georgia, Tennessee, and across the region. The National Transmission Needs Study estimated in 2023 that the Southeast will need about 6.8 Terawatt-miles of new power lines to keep up with the growing electricity demand in the region within the next ten years (by 2035). The federal dollars are a decent start at offsetting these needs, but it’s unlikely a similar bill will pass under the next administration. Most or all of the remaining effort will need to be local.
Transmission is often seen as technical but its benefits are not abstract. The lights stay on during a brutal winter storm; the bill arrives and you don’t have to struggle to pay it; a new, power-needy manufacturing plant opens and you get a job.
In press releases touting the grant awards, both TVA and Georgia Power cheer the economic and social benefits that will come from the new transmission lines, including new jobs and less pollution. In short, these investments pay for themselves. We can’t afford to stop investing in our community even when the federal dollars dry up.
The post New federal grants will improve the Southeastern power grid. But the need for more will only grow from here. appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Australia’s $17B Grid Expansion, Recycling Blades to Steel
Allen covers Suzlon hitting 2 GW in a single Indian state, Nabrawind’s crane-free turbine install in Namibia, Antora’s South Dakota thermal battery, Australia’s $17 billion grid expansion, and Shimizu recycling old turbine blades into steel.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
GOOD MORNING.
The wind industry is not just getting bigger.
It is getting smarter.
And today … we have the proof.
Let us start in India.
SUZLON GROUP just crossed a milestone.
Two gigawatts of wind orders … in a single Indian state.
The latest deal … sixty-five turbines at three megawatts each
for a company called SUNSURE ENERGY.
SUNSURE is not a utility.
It is an independent power producer
building round-the-clock clean energy
for data centers … electric vehicles … and heavy industry.
Wind paired with solar and battery storage.
Power that does not stop when the sun goes down.
SUZLON is already building six hundred and sixty-four megawatts
of additional commercial and industrial projects in the same region.
And SUNSURE … backed by PARTNERS GROUP of Switzerland …
has seven gigawatts in development across India
with a target of ten gigawatts by two thousand thirty.
That is not government-led.
That is private capital chasing wind.
Now … across the ocean to Africa.
A Spanish company called NABRAWIND [NAH-brah-wind]
just solved a problem that has plagued remote wind farms for years.
How do you install a turbine
when you cannot get a crane to the site?
Their answer is a system called SKYLIFT.
No heavy-lift cranes. None.
A self-erecting tower combined with a blade installation tool
they call the BLADERUNNER.
They just put up a GOLDWIND six-megawatt turbine
at a wind farm in NAMIBIA.
And here is the part that changes the math.
Traditional crane installation needs calm air.
Six to eight meters per second. Maximum.
NABRAWIND’s system works in fifteen meters per second sustained …
with gusts up to twenty.
That site blows hard. All the time.
Which is exactly why they chose it.
When complete … seven turbines …
two hundred and thirty gigawatt-hours a year.
About six percent of NAMIBIA’s entire electricity demand.
NABRAWIND was acquired by Australia’s FORTESCUE last year
as part of its industrial decarbonization push.
So India is stacking private-sector wind orders.
Africa is installing turbines without cranes.
And in SOUTH DAKOTA …
they are storing the wind itself.
A California startup called ANTORA ENERGY
just built a five-gigawatt-hour thermal battery
at an ethanol plant in BIG STONE CITY.
More than two hundred solid carbon blocks.
When the wind blows at night and nobody needs the power …
the blocks absorb cheap electricity and heat up.
When the plant needs energy …
the blocks release heat or generate electricity
through special cells that capture light
from superheated material.
Think of it as a giant toaster oven battery.
Full power expected by October.
The plant’s president put it simply.
Nobody has got a switch for the wind.
It blows when it wants to blow.
Now … down under.
The AUSTRALIAN government just announced
the biggest single expansion of its electricity grid.
Nineteen renewable energy projects.
Seven-point-eight gigawatts of generation.
Seven-point-nine gigawatt-hours of battery storage.
Seventeen billion dollars in private investment.
Nineteen thousand construction jobs.
Power for four million homes.
Among the largest … RWE’s [arr-vay’s] THEODORE wind farm in QUEENSLAND.
One-point-one gigawatts. Up to one hundred and seventy turbines.
Three billion Australian dollars.
RWE … the same company building offshore wind
in England and Denmark …
is now building onshore in AUSTRALIA.
And the AUSTRALIAN government is not stopping.
They just opened the next round of tenders.
Another five gigawatts.
Finally … JAPAN.
Major contractor SHIMIZU [shee-MEE-zoo] CORPORATION
has developed a way to recycle old wind turbine blades.
Not into park benches. Not into landfill.
Into steel.
The blades are cut and crushed into a material
that goes into electric furnaces
to adjust the carbon content of steel …
making it harder and stronger.
JAPAN expects to replace one hundred to two hundred turbines a year
by the two thousand thirties.
That is two to three thousand tonnes of blade waste. Annually.
SHIMIZU has built about twenty percent
of the wind power facilities in JAPAN.
They see this technology as a way to grow
their entire wind energy business.
So … let us step back.
India stacks two gigawatts of private-sector wind orders.
Africa installs turbines in gale-force winds … without a crane.
South Dakota stores surplus wind in superheated carbon blocks.
Australia backs nineteen projects with seventeen billion dollars.
And Japan turns old blades into stronger steel.
From the factory floor to the scrap yard …
from the wind farm to the furnace …
the industry is solving problems
at every stage of a turbine’s life.
And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 25th of May 2026.
Join us for the UPTIME WIND ENERGY PODCAST tomorrow.
We’ve all heard ideas like the one being expressed here, though this one sounds extreme. Jail sentence? Education is exclusively an exercise in pounding in bad habits?
What’s the outcome for students in the very worst of our schools that make no attempt whatsoever to help its pupils learn to think critically? Well, their kids learn to:
- Read and write
- Do math, at least through algebra
- Understand some level of history and geography
- Make friends and get along with others
- Establish independence from the parents
- Gain the qualifications for employment
What’s the alternative? Illiteracy? Social isolation? Child labor? Poverty? Neurotic sloth? Being a burden on society?
Is it a coincidence that the countries with the best educated children are the happiest, sanest and most productive nations on the planet?
If you’re a competent woman working at the highest echelon in the U.S. government, better start packing your bags.
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