The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced roughly $967 million in additional funding on October 20, 2026 through its Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grant program. The money goes to states, U.S. territories and tribes for projects that upgrade critical infrastructure and prevent power disruptions, with the stated goals of meeting rising demand and lowering costs for households and businesses.
Allocations by recipient are posted through FedConnect under funding opportunity DE-FOA-0002736. The announcement does not break out amounts by state or name individual projects. Each state or tribe selects its own projects within the formula, and DOE's program page says priority goes to work that delivers affordable, reliable power to the communities it serves.
The program dates to the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and pays out over five years. Shares are set by formula, weighing population, land area, the likelihood and severity of disruptive events such as wildfires and severe storms, and how much a locality has historically spent on mitigation. The Office of Electricity runs it with support from the National Energy Technology Laboratory.
An amendment issued the same day opened a 120-day application window for the fiscal 2025 and 2026 cycle, covering both existing recipients and new applicants, with a deadline of February 17, 2027. State energy offices will assemble their project lists over the winter, and utilities and large customers typically make their case to those offices before applications are filed.
For commercial and industrial sites, the effect shows up at the utility level, where hardening work can shorten outages on the feeders that serve them. The funding arrives as utilities face capital spending that is outpacing cost recovery and as reliability planners warn about several grid regions coming under strain at once. Longer and costlier outages have also been changing the returns on battery storage at commercial sites.
