DOE awards TVA $250 million to expand transmission capacity, support 800 jobs
The award is set to support 84 projects across TVA’s service states, which will add 2.5 gigawatts of grid capacity, serve 2.58 million and support 800 jobs.
On Oct. 13, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) visited Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) headquarters in Knoxville to announce a $250 million federal award to strengthen the largest public power provider in the country.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly was there to mark the occasion.
“The reliability of TVA is almost 99%, and with the deployment of this money from the program, it’s only going to get better. We’re giving this quarter of a billion dollars to increase the capacity of the transmission system to reduce congestion and to upgrade the system so there are fewer actual transmission failures,” he opened.
TVA President and CEO Mike Skaggs then took the stage to give his thanks.
“Every day, our team goes to work with our one mission in mind, which is to make better the lives of those who live in this region. We can’t do it alone,” he admitted. “We get support just like we’re getting today from the administration, government agencies like the DOE, associations and local power companies. These grants will help us deploy advanced technologies and enhance our current system and make it more efficient and reliable and resilient.”
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann closed out the remarks with a nod to the region’s momentum. Just weeks earlier, the same venue had hosted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s celebration of TVA’s permit for its Clinch River small modular reactor.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, we were in this wonderful venue celebrating another win for TVA. I want to assure each and every one of you that TVA, our entire region and the country is moving in the right direction on energy. Transmission to me is the lifeline, and that’s why I was infinitely grateful to Secretary Danly for putting that money there. They could have put it anywhere in the country; they put it here, and for that I say thank you,” he ended.
Key takeaways
Beyond the dollar figure, here’s what the award means for the Tennessee Valley.
Transmission matters more than ever.
In today’s energy boom, generating power is only half the equation. Transmission lines carry electricity from where it’s produced to the homes, factories and utilities that depend on it, and that delivery is what turns power into real value for the region. It’s why Danly called transmission “the backbone of the utility system.”
A stronger backbone means lower costs and fewer outages.
“Transmission lowers rates generally because it reduces congestion, and transmission increases the resilience of the system because the more stable you have of a transmission system, the less outages are caused by failure of that backbone,” Danly explained. “It is of universal benefit to everybody.”
Skaggs added that the grants “provide meaningful investment into our system, which will benefit our ratepayers by supporting affordable, competitive rates as we prepare for the future.”
Capacity drives economic development.
For companies considering Tennessee, dependable power is a deciding factor. “When I sit with our governor, when I sit with our senators, TVA is always at the table. They want to make sure that if they come to Tennessee, they have a reliable source of energy,” Fleischmann said. He pointed to Oak Ridge as one example: “We brought in about 225 to 229 new nuclear businesses in Oak Ridge. They are going to require power.” The award offers reassurance to those companies and the ones still to come.
Danly echoed that point. “Tennessee is a boom state that’s open for business, and it’s going to drive more of the economic investment in technology and manufacturing that is going to be the future of Tennessee,” he said. “This is going to be yet another draw for businesses to come to Tennessee, along with all of the welcoming business regulatory environment that is already here.”
The award isn’t aimed at data centers.
“There’s five lines that we’ll be working on associated with the money, and those five lines aren’t directly connected to a data center,” clarified Skaggs. “That doesn’t mean that there won’t be some load carried on those transmission lines for a data center, but they’re not as a result of trying to build a data center.”
Workforce is the next piece of the puzzle.
Fleischmann said the grant addresses one of the region’s biggest needs, but the state will also have to look beyond transmission. “We’ve got to get more electrons on the grid, but when we get them on the grid, we’ve got to be able to deliver them,” he said. “The other thing, of course, is workforce.”
There’s even more money involved.
The $250 million in federal funding is paired with about $331 million in applicant cost-share funding, bringing the total award to approximately $581 million.
Read the full press release here.
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