Energy Commission Okays $24 M in Clean Energy Grants

This week, the California Energy Commission handed out $24 million in grants for electric buses and cars with bidirectional capabilities, three electric charging station projects at multi-family housing in low-income and disadvantaged communities, and a green hydrogen pilot.

The Center for Transportation and the Environment, Inc., was awarded a $3.2 million grant for a bidirectional electric transit bus project that is to fuel a building and provide backup power to critical facilities at a bus depot in Oakland.

If all of California’s transit buses were electric, they could supply 1.4 GW of capacity to the grid, CEC staff member Katelynn Dinius told the Commission Sept. 14.

Another $3.7 million went to a vehicle-to-grid project being developed by Andromeda Power. It will use an EV powertrain with fast bidirectional charging to provide backup power from parked cars to a building in underserved communities.

Electric bus and car charging projects were awarded a total $7.23 million.

Of that amount, $3 million was awarded to Ecology Action of Santa Cruz for 375 EV charging ports at about 76 apartments. It is to demonstrate the viability and scalability of a low-cost, low-power direct installation model for the equitable deployment of EV supply equipment in Northern California.

CLEAResult Consulting, Inc., was awarded $ 2 million for 100 Level 2 EV chargers to support about 300 multi-family housing units in Northern California.

Another $2.2 million goes to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to deploy 108 Level 2 charging stations across 6 multi-family housing complexes.

Other grants approved mid-week included:

$5 million to Anaheim Transportation Authority to install EV charging infrastructure and microgrids to support 50 electric transit buses; $5.7 million to the University of California at Los Angeles to assess the feasibility and safety of blending hydrogen into natural gas pipelines. It will test out the impacts of various blending levels. Hydrogen is a smaller molecule and can leak out of gas pipelines and corrode them; and $2 million to Aspen Environmental Group for engineering and environmental services to help California meet its future energy and greenhouse gas reduction goals.