Massive Federal Transmission Rebuild Funds Will Soon Flow to Projects

The U.S. Department of Energy is closing in on a timeline for
disbursing $80 billion allocated to electric grid upgrades
contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by
Congress. In this episode of Grid Talk, host Marty Rosenberg
talks with Michelle Manary who is the Acting Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Energy Resilience Division in the Office of
Electricity at the U.S. Department of Energy. The discussion
focuses on when and how the money from the infrastructure package
will be spent.


“I would love to see it [flowing] this calendar year. That is a
goal but we’ll see what happens there,” said Manary. 


There’s a lot of planning that goes in to allocating the funding.


“That hat $80 billion-ish to the DOE comes in several different
flavors and so everything’s kind of continuing on from solar and
battery and kind of that generation or storage-side but you also
have probably about $20-ish billion or so on the transmission
side.”


Manary also talks about the collaborative nature of the new
programs. 


“We’re trying to set this up, so it works for the industry.”


Michelle Manary helps lead DOE's division focused on national
transmission infrastructure policy issues in support of national
clean energy objectives. She came to the Department of Energy
from the Bonneville Power Administration where she served as
executive vice president and chief financial officer. Manary
joined BPA in 1998 and successfully held several management
positions within the agency’s Corporate, Power and Transmission
organizations.


Manary holds a Bachelor of Science in finance from Linfield
College in McMinnville, Oregon, and Master of Business
Administration and Public Administration from Willamette
University in Salem, Oregon.