New Study Helps Map Out Road Ahead for U.S. Electricity System

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• Materially expanding existing Federal programs to demonstrate the integration and optimization of distribution-system technologies.
• Providing incentives for energy storage.
• Enhancing coordination between energy-sector information-sharing and analysis centers and the intelligence communities to synthesize threat analysis and disseminate it to industry in a timely and useful manner.
• Supporting grants for small utilities facing cyber, physical, and climate threats.
• Accounting for emerging threats during reliability planning.
• Providing funding assistance to enhance analytical capabilities in state public utility commissions.

Invest in a Modern Workforce. A skilled workforce that can build, operate, and manage this modernized grid infrastructure is essential for the 21st century electricity system. Building a dynamic electricity workforce will require support from the Federal Government, including by: 

• Strengthening Federal and regional efforts focused on electricity workforce development and transition assistance.
• Supporting cyber-physical systems (CPS) curriculum, training, and education for grid modernization and cybersecurity.
• Enhancing and aligning skills-based training and electricity-sector workforce development.

Enhance Electricity Integration in North America. Leaders in the United States, Canada, and Mexico have publicly and repeatedly affirmed support for increasing energy integration, and there is a general understanding across the continent that the benefits of cross-border electricity trade can be improved with deeper system integration. A subset of the policies needed to accomplish this goal include:

• Advancing North American grid security through sharing of best practices and exploration of potential future cooperation on grid security issues.
• Facilitating the permitting of cross-border transmission-facilities by expanding the Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit.
• Increasing North American clean-energy and technical coordination and enhancing cooperation on energy information exchange across North America.

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