Northwestern REC awarded $4.7 million to strengthen electric grid
CAMBRIDGE SPRINGS, PA – Northwestern Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Inc. (Northwestern REC) has been awarded nearly $4.7 million to improve electric grid and resiliency through the 2026 Pennsylvania Grid Resilience Grants (PA GRG) funding. The project will prevent power outages, providing more reliability for emergency services, businesses, and households.
“Now more than ever we need to build infrastructure that keeps our power grid reliable and mitigates challenges such as climate change-driven weather events, population growth, and aging infrastructure,” said DEP Secretary Jessica Shirley. “The Grid Resilience Grants provide important funding that brings more energy jobs, more investment in our communities, and a more resilient and reliable electric grid to Pennsylvanians.”
The grant funds will allow Northwestern REC to build two interties connecting three substations: Edinboro, Edinboro West, and Saegertown. Once complete, the project will allow Northwestern REC to route electricity between these substations during times of outage, a process called back-feeding. More than 4,000 members are connected to these three substations, which sometimes experience power supply outages – a loss of power feeding these substations.
Once this project is complete, Northwestern REC will be able to send power between the intertied substations, reducing power supply outages by up to 85%. The ability to back-feed will reduce not just the number of outages, but also the duration of outages experienced by members served by these substations.
This is the second Grid Resilience Grant awarded to Northwestern REC. The first, nearly $870,000 awarded in 2023, helped underwrite a similar project connecting the cooperative’s Oil Creek and Centerville substations. That project is currently under construction.
“Northwestern REC is so grateful to the Pennsylvania DEP for their continued support of grid resilience in northwestern Pennsylvania,” Northwestern REC Director of Communications Amber Till said. “These projects have been part of our work plan for several years. Due to the cost of construction, they were out-of-reach. These grants make it possible to harden our grid without putting the full cost of the project on the rural communities in our service territory.”
The PA GRG Program is funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Grid Resilience State/Tribal Formula Grant Program. This year’s $10 million PA GRG awards will leverage a total $3 million awardee cost share.
This is PA GRG’s second round of funded projects. All awards are pending U.S. Department of Energy’s confirmation. For more information on PA GRG, please see DEP’s Pennsylvania Grid Resilience Grant Program webpage.
# # #
Northwestern REC, a not-for-profit, at-cost electric distribution utility headquartered in Cambridge Springs, serves nearly 20,000 members throughout rural Erie and Crawford counties, and parts of Venango and Mercer counties in Pennsylvania, Ashtabula County Ohio, and Chautauqua County, New York. For more information, visit northwesternrec.com.