The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $65 million for Connected Communities 2.0, a funding opportunity announcement (DE-FOA-3136) to drive innovation to manage growing building, transportation, and industrial electric loads on the grid.

Connected Communities 2.0 has three main goals:

• Demonstrate how smart and coordinated management of EVs and other distributed energy resources can together provide grid support, reduce system costs, and encourage customer adoption.

• Demonstrate approaches to smart change management, grid-edge technical measures, and innovative planning strategies as valid methods towards right sizing investments in the distribution system.

• Demonstrate approaches towards improved resilience for communities, end-use customers, and the overall grid.

To those ends, this FOA targets four areas for research, development, and demonstration:

• Field validation of grid-edge technical measures that reduce the necessary level of investment into distribution infrastructure.

• Field validation of smart charge management for EVs that can be deployed at large scale.

• Demonstration of increased customer benefits and grid resilience using grid edge technical measures, both in front of and behind the meter.

• Data collection to assess system readiness for new loads.

This FOA has two major topical areas:

• Connected Communities, focused on grid edge technical measures in buildings, industry, and transportation to prepare the electric grid for these new loads, and improve the customer benefits and grid resilience; and

• Smart Charge Management, focused on various unique urban, suburban, and rural use cases to build confidence in it as an effective approach for electric vehicles to provide flexibility and value to the electric grid.

Required concept papers are due 20 August 2024, and full applications are due 10 October 2024.