After a year of canceling projects and a DOGE-led workforce dismantling that culminated in an agency restructuring, the Department of Energy is showing signs of life.
So far in 2026, DOE has posted funding opportunities including for up to $171.5 million for next-gen geothermal field tests, and $50 million for community-scale energy projects on Tribal land. And in mid-March it posted one of its biggest opportunities yet: up to $1.9 billion for grid modernization projects, with an emphasis on transmission expansion and efficiency.
The “Speed to Power through Advanced Reconstructing and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades” program, or SPARK, is the Trump administration’s rebrand of the Grid Resilience and Innovation Program, which obligated $7.06 billion across 105 projects in 2023 and 2024. GRIP was managed by the now-defunct Grid Deployment Office, while SPARK is being managed by the Office of Electricity. DOE said it renamed the program in order to “provide clarity with the program’s updated emphasis.”
SPARK does not appear to draw funding from any reportedly canceled projects or programs, but instead uses part of the remaining GRIP funding not obligated during the Biden administration, which comes from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
That legislation set aside $10.5 billion for projects across three topic areas: grid resilience, smart grid, and grid innovation. The two rounds of funding issued under the Biden administration were heavily focused on resilience against extreme weather, renewables integration, and grid edge solutions, while this latest round appears to be about meeting increased load growth from data centers, explained one former DOE official familiar with GRIP. After all, “speed to power,” the data center industry’s catchphrase for development success, is in the program name.
SPARK is seeking applications for projects that can demonstrate increased transfer capacity, including reconductoring, as well as advanced transmission technologies like dynamic line rating. Projects focused on getting renewable power online, however, are “specifically not of interest.” (There’s a certain irony there, given that renewables are usually built much faster than other forms of generation.)
Despite the ideological change, the former official said that the fact that DOE is using the remaining GRIP funding at all is a positive sign of life at the agency. “This is about having power when you need it,” they said on background. “They kept the focus on improving the grid and on some really viable short-term options to have an impact.”
The program focus was always intended to change between funding rounds, they added: “This evolution is more substantive, but they were always intended to evolve as the needs of the market evolved.”
And as for whether grid stakeholders are still willing to work with DOE after a year of project cancellations and ongoing uncertainty? The former official said they have heard from many companies that are still interested in the revamped program, including companies and utilities that were previously awarded GRIP funding, considering applying for SPARK for new projects.
“I’m encouraged by how many companies I’ve heard from who have an interest in this,” the former official said. All would-be applicants recognize the risks associated with an administration that has been inconsistent with disbursing funds to date, they added, but at the end of the day, the funding opportunities do seem “rooted in what people need from their grid.”
Can DOE still deliver?
According to two other former DOE officials, the SPARK program will be a test for whether DOE can still move money out the door and manage massive programs with its shrunken staff. A key question looming over all of the open funding opportunities, they added, is whether SPARK funding will actually be awarded and disbursed at a normal pace, or whether DOE will just let selected projects languish, which is happening at scale across the agency.
Despite the apparently nonpartisan goal of modernizing the grid, DOE sent cancellation notices to the recipients of GRIP awards totaling more than $2 billion in October. While none of those awards appear to have been officially de-obligated, the fact that funds still aren’t flowing normally for DOE projects is a major red flag about the agency’s ability or willingness to execute on its own programs, the former officials said.
And the previous cancellation announcements may deter projects that would otherwise have applied; the October cancellations almost exclusively targeted awardees based in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 elections. (A handful of recipients sued the Trump administration over the cancellations, and a judge ordered DOE to reinstate the seven projects covered by the suit.)
The call-out discouraging projects to help renewables get onto the grid could be an additional deterrent. And potential applicants don’t have long to pull their pitch together. There is a six-week turnaround between submitting a concept paper outlining a project (due April 2), and when full project proposals are due in May.
This is a significant departure from the GRIP process, which gave applicants — and DOE itself, which reviews concept papers and offers feedback so applicants can decide whether to go through the rigorous process of submitting a full application — as much as four months.
All three former officials pointed to the tight timelines laid out in the notice of funding for SPARK as a potential challenge. As one former official pointed out, GDO received more than 700 concept papers for the very first round of GRIP funding. Around half of those projects went on to submit proposals.
Now, DOE has given itself mere weeks to review potentially hundreds of concept papers. In a webinar for prospective SPARK applicants, DOE officials indicated they planned to provide responses to concept papers by the end of April.
That condensed timeline is “literally insane,” another former official said.
