Texas A&M University is part of a United States team that will use a $7.5 million Department of Energy (DOE) grant to help advance India’s power grid to ensure access to affordable and reliable energy.
India’s Ministry of Science and Technology will match the commitment of the DOE, bringing the total commitment to $30 million, officials said.
“This new consortium demonstrates the U.S. and Indian commitments to ensuring access to affordable and reliable energy in both countries,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said.
“We know that continued grid innovation will promote economic growth and energy security in the United States and India.”
The initiative, part of America’s commitment to fostering the reliable, resilient and secure delivery of electricity, was needed for the strong U.S. national security, economic growth and global leadership, noted DOE officials.
To help pave the way to a more advanced distribution grid that will allow greater use of distributed energy resources such as microgrids and energy storage, the new consortia will bring together experts from academia, DOE’s national laboratories and industry.
Together with their counterparts in India, the center will conduct research and deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies that will modernize the grids of both the nations to make them “smarter,” while increasing resilience and reliability, DOE officials added.
The U.S. participants include Texas A&M, Washington State University, MIT, University of Hawaii, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Snohomish County (WA) Public Utility District, Avista, Burns and McDonnell, ETAP Operation Technology, ALSTOM Grid/GE Grid Solutions, Clean Energy Storage, ABB, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA).
The Indian team, led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, includes partners from IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Bhubaneshwar and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi.
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Contact: Keith Randall, News & Information Services, at (979) 845-4644 or keith-randall@tamu.edu or Charles Rousseaux, Communications Director, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, at (202) 586-0080 or charles.rousseaux@hq.doe.gov
