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Commission approves FAMU‑FSU research subrecipient application after data governance questions
Summary
The Commission authorized staff to accept and enter a subrecipient agreement with FAMU‑FSU for a DOE Genesis grid‑modeling research project after staff assured commissioners that shared utility data would be anonymized, protected by NDAs, and that the city's role would be limited to model validation (about 5% of project budget).
The Tallahassee City Commission voted unanimously to authorize the city manager to accept and sign a subrecipient grant agreement if the FAMU‑FSU College of Engineering is awarded funding under the U.S. Department of Energy ‘Genesis’ mission.
Commissioner Porter asked detailed questions about data governance, privacy protections, and potential intellectual property outcomes. Utility staff (Michael Olsen and Tony Gian) replied that the city would provide aggregated, anonymized distribution and load data, weatherization information and historic incident data (hurricane impacts), but would not share customer‑identifying information. They said critical energy infrastructure information would be protected by a non‑disclosure agreement and staff would adjust datasets to avoid disclosure of sensitive details.
Staff explained the city’s role represents approximately 5% of the initial project budget and would focus on validating model outputs rather than claiming ownership of any resulting commercialized intellectual property; commercialization discussions are premature at the application stage.
Commissioner Porter asked whether other municipal utilities were participating; staff said not as part of this specific application with FSU/FAMU. With those assurances the Commission approved the recommendation to participate and authorize acceptance if the grant is awarded.
What was approved: authorization for the city manager (or designee) to accept the application award and execute a subrecipient agreement under the DOE terms should FAMU‑FSU be selected.
