US Announces USD $34mn Investment To Improve 12 Electricity Projects

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US’s Department of Energy (DOE) made an announcement for investing $34 million in 12 projects across 11 states. The project aimed at strengthening and modernising America’s aging power grid through the development of cost-effective, high-speed, and safe undergrounding technologies. These projects claim to support undergrounding electric power lines, helping modernize the electric grid and replace aging power infrastructure. 

Through the grid overhaul with proactive, high-speed undergrounding for reliability, resilience, and security programme, the selected projects are expected to advance innovative solutions. This can help upgrade and expand the grid infrastructure—lowering costs, reducing inefficiencies, mitigating disruptions from extreme weather events, and accelerating the adoption of renewable clean energy resources. 

The electric power distribution system in the U.S. has over 5.5 million line-miles with over 180 million power poles, all of which are susceptible to damage by weather and its effects, and account for a majority of power outages in the country each year. 

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Undergrounding power lines is a proven way of improving the system reliability for both transmission and distribution grids as weather events are less likely to interfere with systems that are protected below ground. There are various projects that are in the pipeline including those that will be developed by: 

• Arizona State University that will develop a water-jet underground construction tool that would deploy medium-voltage electrical cables and conduits simultaneously underground with a lower risk to existing utilities.

• GE Vernova Advanced Research making a robotic worm tunneling construction tool that would dig and install conduit and cables for underground distribution powerlines in a single step. 

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• Melni Technologies that will redesign and develop medium-voltage power cable splice kits that require fewer steps and streamline connections to greatly reduce human errors and boost the reliability of underground electrical power distribution systems.

• Oceanit that will develop a look-ahead subsurface sensor system—capable of sensing what lies beyond a drill bit–that would take advantage of unmanned aerial vehicles and electromagnetic resistivity techniques to avoid damaging existing utilities when undergrounding powerlines. 

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that will make an artificial intelligence system for processing geophysical survey data into digital twin—a model of a real-world physical product—and augmented reality in order to identify existing utilities and other subsurface obstacles before installing underground power distribution lines. 

• Prysmian Cables and Systems USA that will make a hands-free power cable splicing machine operating in underground vaults to reduce the share of splicing-caused medium-voltage network failures from 60-80% to less than 5%.