FPUA board approves design contracts, budget timing changes for $8.8 million GRIP grid resilience project

The Fort Pierce Utilities Authority board voted unanimously May 20 to approve two design authorizations and advance grant-funded design budgets for a Department of Energy GRIP project to strengthen the utility’s electric grid.

The project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program authorized under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, awards FPUA roughly $5.8 million with a local match of just under $3 million, for a total project cost of about $8.8 million. The board approved a design contract not to exceed $465,803 (specific authorization 56LE2501) for the replacement of four distribution transformers and a design contract not to exceed $489,494 (specific authorization 56PS2501) for a 69 kV ring-bus configuration at Totten Substation. In separate votes the board also approved moving previously budgeted grant funds from future fiscal years into the current year to pay for the designs: $85,000 for the transformer design line and $500,000 for the ring-bus design line. Each motion passed on a 5-0 roll-call vote.

Why it matters: FPUA officials said the upgrades will increase localized capacity, reduce outage times in the utility’s poorest-performing areas and add automated protection…