President Bush Requests $25 Billion for U.S. Department of Energy’s FY 2009 Budget

Budget includes:

Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability ($134 million)
The FY 2009 Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability budget requests $134 million, a $19 million increase over the FY 2008 request, to modernize the electricity transmission and distribution system by making it more reliable, secure, and efficient. The FY 2009 budget request allocates $100.2 million for research and development activities in superconducting cables and energy storage technologies to strengthen grid stability, reduce frequency and duration of operational disruptions, and increase efficiencies. The budget request also supports implementation of EPAct requirements in transmission and energy corridor designation and enhancement of DOE’s energy emergency response capabilities to advance energy assurance through federal, state, and local coordination.

"Overall, grid power storage is allocated a tiny fraction of the overall budget... but it's a big improvement over previous years where I think it was closer to $10M"


Accelerating the Advanced Energy Initiative ($3.2 billion)
At a request of $3.2 billion, $623 million above the FY 2008 enacted appropriation of $2.5 billion, the President’s AEI will continue to improve the nation’s energy security and aims to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy. AEI supports a diverse energy portfolio designed to meet the energy challenges of the 21st century by promoting the licensing of new nuclear power plants and conducting research on an advanced nuclear fuel cycle; furthering a robust vehicle technology program by developing lithium-ion batteries, plug-in hybrids, and drive-train electrification; and investing to make solar power cost-competitive with conventional sources of electricity by 2015.


"This much larger portion of the budget includes money for lithium-ion batteries and plug-in hybrids."



For a more complete description of the bill, go to: http://pressmediawire.com/article.cfm?articleID=5172