(DES MOINES, IA) – The Iowa Energy Center (IEC) Board, Tuesday, awarded nearly $2.3 million to eight projects through the IEC Grant Program. The competitive grant opportunity, funded by gas and electric utilities across the state, enables eligible applicants to pursue projects that provide a benefit to Iowa ratepayers and align with one of the key focus areas of the Iowa Energy Plan. Those areas include technology-based energy research and development, energy workforce development, support for rural and underserved areas, biomass conversion, natural gas expansion in underserved areas, electric grid modernization, alternative fuel vehicles, and carbon management.

Seven of the grants – totaling $2,011,328 – went to Iowa State University, for:

• Enhancing Iowa’s Energy Resilience Through Anaerobic Digestion-Based Microgrids
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assisted Robotic Mappingof Underground Infrastructure
• Development of New Ultra-Low-Cost, Ultra-High-Performance, All Solid-State Sodium Batteries using All Iowa Resources for Storage of Renewable Iowa Wind Energy
• Fatigue Failure Mitigation in Aluminum Conductor Steel Reinforced (ACSR) Conductors of Power Grids via Advanced Peening Technologies
• Implementing a GIS Tool for Enhancing Gridline Resilience to Natural Hazards
• CyMath: K12 and College Math Tutoring as a Springboard to Strengthen Statewide Iowa Energy Workforce
• Data-Driven Modeling, Prediction, and Mitigation of Electrification Impacts in Iowa Cold Weather

The eighth grant amounting to $256,509, went to Terenc, LLC, for Distributed Energy Resource Management System for Rural Electric Cooperatives and Municipal Utilities. For more information on the IEC Grant Program, visit the webpage here.