"Modernizing The Grid: A Tugboat 'Trying To Turn A Big Ocean Liner'"

"The U.S. electric power grid is one of the biggest, most costly machines on Earth. Its value is somewhere in the trillions of dollars, and it currently delivers power to 334 million people in the United States and parts of Mexico and Canada. Its basic technology was settled over 100 years ago as a kind of one-way street that delivers electricity from a network of power plants to passive consumers.

The National Academy of Engineering once rated the grid as the 'supreme engineering achievement of the 20th century.' But starting about three years ago, the Obama administration realized that without a 21st-century technology boost, the grid might not be able to support its Clean Power Plan. The grid would have to perform more like a two-way street to provide renewable energy quickly enough to lower the risks of climate change.

In January, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz rolled out the blueprint for this ambitious change, bankrolled by $220 million in new funds. Teams from 14 of DOE's 17 research labs will work on 88 projects designed to transform the power grid into one that could handle much larger quantities of wind and solar power."

John Fialka reports for ClimateWire July 6, 2016.