The Energy Department to spend nearly $2 billion to squeeze more power from the aging U.S. grid

The Energy Department is about to roll out nearly $2 billion for a push that sounds modest until you look at the grid it’s aimed at: old, crowded, and under strain. The money will back 31 projects in 26 states, with the goal of wringing more electricity out of the system without waiting on a lot of new generation to be built.

Officials say the projects should add more than 23 gigawatts of capacity, enough to serve 16 million homes. The work is not the usual dig-and-build routine. It includes sensors and other gear that can track weather in real time, keep transmission safe, and shift power away from lines that are overloaded or congested.

The department says those upgrades could improve reliability and cut bills for about 100 million Americans. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who is set to announce the grant program in Allentown, Pennsylvania, framed it as a way to get more from what already exists and move more electricity across the grid. The Associated Press got the details before the public release.

The timing is the real story. AI is driving electricity demand up fast, data centers are coming online faster than new plants can be built, and utility bills are rising faster than inflation in many places. That has set off resistance to data centers in communities around the country, while Trump keeps backing them and calling opponents backwards and poor.

The grants will also be matched by $3.35 billion in cost-share funding from recipients. And the projects were chosen for speed, with more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines getting component upgrades and technological improvements across nearly 21,000 miles. The money itself comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law signed under Joe Biden, even as Trump’s administration pushes a very different energy agenda of more oil, more gas, and fewer brakes.