40101(d) Program Awardees

Grant Amount: $266,137

Project Description: The City of Newton will perform Line D Rebuild and Reconductor Project to address critical issues within its aging electrical infrastructure that is increasingly prone to failures. The Project will enhance the reliability and resiliency of the City of Newton’s electrical grid by replacing outdated 60-year-old distribution poles, rebuilding and reconductoring approximately 1/2 mile of the 4kv distribution backbone feeder, replacing aging copper wires with more efficient and reliable aluminum conductors. The Project will also ensure a stable and efficient supply of electricity to critical municipal services, including City Hall, sewer and water plant, Sheriff’s office, and the Electric Department, ensuring the reliable operation of critical public safety and utility functions.

Project Benefits: The project will benefit 1,650 customers. The Project aligns with the goals of the Opportunity Zone program by fostering economic development and improving infrastructure in underserved areas and ensuring that underserved communities receive improved services, including reliability, resilience, and public safety. The City is designated as an Opportunity Zone under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Jasper County is one of the smallest counties in Illinois and the median household income in the City of Newton is $55,109, which is significantly lower than the State of Illinois median of $78,433.

Project Location(s): Jasper County

Grant Amount: $1,127,470

Project Description: City Water Light and Power (CWLP), the municipal-owned utility of the City of Springfield, serves 70,000 customers and is implementing a layered resilience strategy to enhance grid reliability and resilience across both transmission and distribution systems. The project involves deploying advanced technologies, including three-phase reclosers, vault-mounted switches, compact modular reclosers (CMRs), and replacing substation oil circuit breakers on the transmission and distribution system. These upgrades will improve fault detection, isolation, and restoration times, and will reduce outage frequency and duration while strengthening the grid against disruptive events such as severe weather or equipment failures. All new technologies will be integrated into CWLP’s SCADA system, which supports both Grid Management System (GMS) and Distribution Management System (DMS) operations, enabling real-time monitoring and enhanced grid management. The project also includes equipping CWLP staff with the necessary knowledge and skills to operate and maintain the new technologies.

Project Benefits: The project will benefit 70,000 customers, including in several Equity Investment Eligible Communities (EIEC). The project will improve CWLP ability to directly mitigate the impact of grid disruptions, minimizing the scope and duration of outages and reducing energy burden for its customers. Furthermore, the initiative will maintain good-paying, safe jobs, and include workforce training to equip the staff with the skills needed to maintain and operate the upgraded grid infrastructure, ensuring long-term project sustainability. Additionally, prioritizing resilience upgrades in historically underserved communities will ensure equitable access to a stable and reliably power supply, which is critical for economic growth and quality of life.

Project Location(s): Sangamon County

Grant Amount: $1,775,714

Project Description: Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association will implement an Emergency Equipment Share project (EES) which is an innovative approach to addressing material shortages due to lengthened supply chain issues and can be replicated at other sites in IL and across the nation. The Project will help partnering utilities to prepare and quickly recover from storm-related outages and reduce electric outage durations caused by climate-driven weather changes. The Project will improve electricity reliability metrics by removing supply chain concerns for all participating partners and neighboring electric cooperatives. EECA will partner with Monroe County Electric Cooperative and Southern IL Power Cooperative and will share the equipment with eight other neighboring small electric coops when not needed by the partnering utilities. Emergency share materials will include: 1) substation materials (high voltage fuses, substation transformers, substation breakers, voltage regulators); 2) three phase overhead; 3) single phase overhead; 4) underground electric; and 5) electric service point materials.

Project Benefits: The project will impact over 70,000 electric cooperative consumers located in Southern IL and will add resiliency to the local transmission grid that has over 1000 miles of line and extends into the 14 southernmost counties in IL.

Project Location(s): Alexander, Franklin, Jackson, Johnson, Massac, Monroe, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, St. Clair, Union, Washington, and Williamson County

Grant Amount: $475,376

Project Description: Illinois Municipal Utilities Association (IMUA) serves over 40 Illinois municipal electric utilities across Illinois. The project aims to establish an Emergency Equipment Share Program (EESP) to provide an inventory of critical electric distribution system equipment that municipal utilities can draw on during emergency power outages. The Project will create a hub of readily available, easy-to-access, essential equipment that otherwise has long lead time for delivery. All participating utilities will have access to a ready store of emergency equipment at a warehouse in Springfield (including poles, cross arms, pole top transformers, backyard easement machine, etc.), allowing utilities to restore power faster in the wake of derechos, large-scale fires, tornados, earthquakes, floods, and other major distribution system disruptions.

Project Benefits: The project will benefit more than 530,000 customers of small municipal utilities across more than 40 cities and villages in Illinois, including several Equity Eligible Investment Communities (EIECs). The project will allow for a quicker restoration of a downed distribution system in the wake of a major power outage, ensuring key services to the electric consumers affected by the power disruption. The project will also help municipalities rebuild their electric infrastructure faster after catastrophic events. Further, quick restoration of power will help protect vulnerable population from health hazards associated with prolonged outages (e.g., heat stress, freezing temperatures, food spoilage, loss of electric-powered medical devices, dangers associated with downed lines, etc.).

Project Location(s): Alexander, Bureau, Champaign, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Cook, Cumberland, DeWitt, DuPage, Effingham, Greene, Hamilton, Henry, Jasper, Jo Daviess, Kane, LaSalle, Madison, Massac, McDonough, Monroe, Moultrie, Ogle, Randolph, Sangamon, St. Clair, Wabash, Wayne, White, and Whiteside County

Grant Amount: $207,356

Project Description: MJM Electric Cooperative will apply modern design and construction standards to build a tie between Rinaker and Palmyra substations for a more robust distribution system. The project will include right of way vegetation clearing along the new and existing easements and construction and installation of underground and overhead electric lines. The project will create a loop feed to backfeed residents and businesses during outages at either substation, adding resilience and hardening infrastructure in this area and significantly reducing outage frequency and duration.

Project Benefits: The project will benefit more than 1,100 customers in the rural areas that are part of a larger coal mining community enduring hardships and disadvantages throughout the last decades. This area is also prone to increased severe weather events (from record setting heat waves, to more severe thunderstorms and tornadoes). Application of the tie-line will provide an interconnection between MJM substations and will provide much-needed resilience and system hardening for this area. It will also provide cost savings for the customers and decrease the number of trucks dispatched during a power restoration event.

Project Location(s): Macoupin County

Grant Amount: $543,232

Project Description: Southeastern Illinois Electric Cooperative (SEIEC) service area is located near the Shawnee National Forest. The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), an invasive beetle, has attacked and killed virtually all ash trees in the Shawnee National Forest. These dead ash trees located near power lines increase the risk of outages and other hazards including wildfires. The project will perform tree trimming, tree clearing and vegetation management in electric distribution system right-of-ways in the Golconda North substation to address one of the leading causes of power outages in the project area and will eliminate some of the key risks of forest fires in the nearby Shawnee National Forest.

Project Benefits: This project will increase electric service reliability for approximately 2,500 residents and small businesses located in a Federal Disadvantaged Community (DAC), providing more affordable and reliable electricity. The project will provide good-paying and safe jobs and will reduce the risk of wildfires threat to the customers and to the Shawnee National Forest.

Project Location(s): Pope County

Grant Amount: $4,336,169

Project Description: Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative (SIEC) will deploy advanced technologies, including Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), Geographic Information System (GIS), Outage Management System (OMS), and Meter Data Management System (MDMS) to replace its existing 20yr-old Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system and paper-based engineering recordkeeping. The project will modernize SIEC’s engineering and operations workflow through the implementation of advanced utility software. The project will allow SIEC to implement features for its membership such as time of use rate options, allow for near-real-time data on SIEC’s electrical distribution system to be used for engineering analysis, outage detection, and aid in future grid flexibility.  The project will utilize outage management software alongside a GPS accurate GIS model and a modern Automatic Metering Infrastructure to reduce outage duration, increase outage prediction accuracy, enhance SIEC’s resource allocation, improve customer communications, enhance data collection and analysis, and improve coordination and control of distribution grid.

Project Benefits: The project will reduce the number and duration of outages for over 11,000 customers in the vulnerable population and several Illinois R3 areas, provide for enhances utility services and cost savings.

Project Location(s): Alexander, Jackson, Johnson, Massac, Pope, Pulaski, Union, and Williamson Counties

Grant Amount: $987,350

Project Description: Southern Illinois Power Cooperative (SIPC) will perform vegetation management on several transmission lines serving rural areas and EIECs. Over time, the overgrowth of vegetation along the transmission lines has reduced the functional right-of-way (ROW), increasing the risk of line faults, system damage, service interruptions, and failures. The project clearing routes serve multiple distribution substations (including Ullin, Dongola, Mill Creek, McClure, Tamms, Olive Branch and Pulaski). The removal and cleanup of vegetation within these prescribed ROW access will reclaim the ROW both on the sides and bottom back to the original 80’ easement. The project will significantly reduce vegetation caused outages, benefiting all members, particularly those in EIECs and critical facilities where interruptions and outages can be detrimental.

Project Benefits: The project will benefit more than 190,000 customers, including in the EIEC areas, and will reduce the number and duration of outages for the customers and for the critical public and commercial facilities served by the lines, including schools, water and irrigation facilities and water district transfer pumps, public safety services, cell towers, communications towers and television stations, local businesses and residential areas located in and around disadvantaged communities. Many of these facilities require reliable power to provide life-essential or other support services during extreme weather and grid-related events, as well as essential public services for large populations, where power loss for extended durations would pose risks to public health and safety.

Project Location(s): Alexander, Hardin, Johnson, Massac, Pope, Pulaski, Union and Williamson Counties