Grid Resilience Program

The Washington State Department of Commerce is accepting applications for the Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grants program, also known as Section 40101(d) under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The program provides funding to support the construction and implementation of projects that enhance the resilience, reliability, and modernization of Washington’s electric grid. It aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, extreme weather, and other natural hazards. This grant program is available to electric utilities and energy sector stakeholders who operate in Washington. Eligible entities include electric grid operators, electricity storage operators, transmission owners, distribution providers, electricity generators, fuel suppliers, and other organizations approved by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). All sizes of utilities are eligible. Notably, 40% of total funds are reserved for small utilities, while the remaining 60% is available to all qualified applicants. Eligible projects include a wide range of grid resilience activities, such as hardening infrastructure against disruptive events, deploying undergrounding technologies, improving vegetation management, developing microgrids and distributed energy resources, and implementing advanced grid monitoring and modeling technologies. Projects must comply with federal and state requirements, including the Build America, Buy America (BABA) provisions, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and Davis-Bacon wage regulations. Applications are due by 11:59 AM on November 20, 2025. Each project must be submitted as a separate application through ZoomGrants. Applicants may submit multiple project applications. Projects will first be reviewed by Commerce and then undergo a secondary review by the U.S. Department of Energy between January and April 2026. Contracts are expected to be finalized by June 2026, with projects implemented over a period of up to 36 months. Funding is provided on a reimbursement basis, structured around clearly defined milestones or deliverables. Cost sharing is required: 100% match for large utilities and 33.34% match for small utilities. A small utility is defined as one that sells no more than 4 million megawatt hours of electricity annually. Technical assistance is available through Commerce’s Energy Resilience and Emergency Management Office (EREMO), and prospective applicants are encouraged to attend pre-application conferences on September 18 or October 7, 2025. All application materials, Q&A documents, and resources are available on the project’s Box.com repository.

Use the Q&A resources and attend a pre-application session. Clearly define resilience impact and project metrics.