The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy announced its intent to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled "Connected Communities" that would invest up to $42 million in pilots around the country. The Connected Communities FOA would demonstrate and evaluate the capacity of grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) to interact with one another and the grid to provide greater degrees of demand flexibility at scale. DOE's intent is to expand an initial set of smart community testbeds into a cohort of approximately six regional pilot projects to study a variety of building types, technologies, utility/grid/regulatory environments in various climates and locations. It will also enable GEB communities around the country to share research results and lessons learned on projects that increase grid reliability, resilience, security and energy integration well into the future.
DOE also plans to issue a Request for Information (RFI) to help inform this funding opportunity. NASEO will respond to the RFI based on input from the NASEO Buildings Committee and GEB Working Group. If you are interested in participating, please contact us.
This is part of a portfolio of activities and resources that includes the NASEO-NARUC GEB Working Group and nascent National Lab technical assistance to Working Group states on GEB and load flexibility.
For more information on the Working Group and NASEO work on load flexibility and GEBs, please contact Rodney Sobin (rsobin@naseo.org), Ed Carley (ecarley@naseo.org) or Maddie Koewler (mkoewler@naseo.org).