Biden and Twenty-One States Announce Grid Enhancement

Last week, the Biden Administration announced plans to modernize the nation’s outdated power grid, which currently poses a major barrier to full utilization of growing renewable energy resources. Twenty-one states, including North Carolina, have agreed to participate in the new initiative. 

The Need For Grid Enhancement Plan

Rapidly growing solar and wind generation, as well as utility-scale battery storage, requires a more robust network of transmission lines to connect these energy sources into a reliable system. The current outdated and failure-prone electric grid is unable to reliably gather the power and carry it to where and when it is needed. 

State Commitments

Participating states have committed to prioritize efforts that support the adoption of modern grid solutions to expand grid capacity and build upon both new and existing transmission and distribution lines. These strategies will include ways to upgrade existing transmission lines to safely carry and distribute power. Nationally, utility-scale solar power and complementary battery storage are already surging. We need to keep this momentum, follow through with aggressive development of our massive wind energy potential, and unify these renewables with an upgraded distribution grid. Expanding expensive, dirty gas, and even more expensive and risky nuclear, is not needed.