On September 24, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of 31 grid-improvement projects across 26 states to receive funding through the SPARK Program – the Speed to Power Through Accelerated Reconductoring and Other Key Advance Transmission Technology Upgrades funding opportunity. Through the SPARK program, DOE intends to catalyze electricity infrastructure investments to meet electricity demand growth and resource adequacy requirements while reducing costs for American households and businesses. With $1.9 billion in federal funding and $3.35 billion in recipient cost-share funding, the awarded projects are expected to make 23 GW of electricity capacity available.
As lead applicants, the Colorado Energy Office and Indiana Office of Energy Development were two State Energy Offices selected among the awarded projects under Topic Area 3: Grid Innovation Program.
- The Colorado Energy Office, along with Xcel Energy, Inc., proposed a project to replace and upgrade one of seven back-to-back high-voltage direct current (HVDC) critical interconnection points between the Western and Eastern interconnections and deploy Advanced Transmission Technologies (ATTs) on the nearby transmission lines, expanding interregional transfer capability, improving reliability, enhancing flexibility, and strengthening grid resilience across Colorado, northern Texas, and neighboring regions and markets.
- The Indiana Office of Energy Development proposed a project to upgrade transmission lines and deploy advanced technologies, providing additional transmission system capacity to address energy affordability and reliability, enable the interconnection of new dispatchable generation, and enable the interconnection of new large-load customers.
Both Colorado and Indiana are among the 13 State Energy Office members of the NASEO Grid Optimization Task Force, a collaborative initiative among states, private-sector partners, and other subject-matter experts to identify, evaluate, and advance grid optimization technologies for the transmission system. The SPARK projects will help inform the Task Force as it seeks to enable the implementation of advanced transmission technologies in other states throughout the country.