ARPA Drives New Tech for Undergrounding Grid

Huge impact if it works.

Involves worms.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced $34 million in funding to support a dozen projects focused on improving the nation’s power resilience by moving some grid infrastructure underground.

The projects span 11 states, and are being developed by small and large businesses, national labs, and universities. They are being funded through the Grid Overhaul with Proactive, High-speed Undergrounding for Reliability, Resilience, and Security program — aptly known as GOPHURRS — and managed by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

Projects include multiple worm-inspired digging approaches, an artificial intelligence and aerial drone solution, ground penetrating radar and advances in cable deployment and splicing.

DOE said the projects announced Tuesday will help to reduce the cost of moving lines underground, as well as increase the speed and safety of that work. Projects include:

$3.7 million to GE Vernova Advanced Research for development of a “robotic worm tunneling construction tool” that can dig and install conduit and cables in a single step. The tool — called SPEEDWORM — could be deployed from a standard pickup truck, according to a DOE list of projects tapped to receive funding;
$4 million to RTX Technology Research Center for development of a mobile sensing platform using radar approaches based on quantum radio frequency sensing, together with artificial intelligence, to locate existing utility lines;
$4.5 million to Prysmian Cables & Systems USA for a hands-free power cable splicing machine that could fit into a utility access hole and use laser cutting and a vision system augmented with machine learning; and
$3.75 million to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for development of an artificial intelligence system for processing geophysical survey data into digital twin and augmented reality to identify existing utilities and other subsurface obstacles before installing underground power distribution lines.

“DOE is supporting teams across the country as they develop innovative approaches to burying power infrastructure underground — increasing our resilience and bringing our aging grid into the 21st Century,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

Meanwhile, readers here will be aware that a cutting edge under grounding project has been inching forward in the Midwest.

The beauty of this approach is that by under grounding, and using existing right of ways, in this case rail, you avoid the (most of) NIMBY permitting headache.

Here’s what we know.

Missouri Independent:

The SOO Green electric transmission project, a 350-mile high-voltage line between Mason City, Iowa, and Plano, Illinois, was proposed in 2018 to deliver renewable power and to better connect the nation’s two largest power markets. The project won approval from Iowa regulators this fall.

The developers of the line, which will link wind and solar power produced in the area overseen by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator with 65 million customers in PJM, the largest U.S. electric market, are using mostly existing rail rights of way and burying the wire underground to sidestep fights over land acquisition, visual aesthetics and other issues that have bedeviled other transmission projects.

That’s why Raj Rajan, vice president of project development for SOO Green, which is still waiting for interconnection agreements from MISO and PJM and Army Corps of Engineers permits, chuckled when he was asked why that novel approach intended to shave time has still taken more than five years to get off the ground.

“Five years can be considered rapid speed in transmission development,” he said.

Indeed, even for a nation that has struggled to bring aging roads, bridges, rail lines and other infrastructure up to par, electric transmission lines take a long time to build.

However, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy is keenly aware of how crucial the pace of transmission expansion is to a reliable grid increasingly beset by severe weather, alleviating pockets of high prices and congestion and achieving federal and states’ decarbonization goals. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says the nation’s grid needs to double to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035.

And, armed with billions in dollars of loans, grants and other funding to improve siting and permitting and help get projects up and running, the agency is making what experts call a historic push to invest in American transmission.

“We have to vastly expand the transmission network across the country and fortunately the Department of Energy has a number of tools to help private industry, states and tribes to move forward in getting the transmission they need,” said Dylan Reed, a senior adviser at the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, which was launched in 2022 in part to expand the transmission system.