Funding opportunity for remote and industrial microgrid projects

Houses and other buildings in a small Alaska village in winter. Mountains are seen in the far distance.
Photo by Yuri Bult-Ito/ACEP
The community of Golovin, population 163, is located on the Seward Peninsula in Northwest Alaska, about 65 miles east of Nome. Golovin is an example of a remote community that would be eligible to apply for C-MAP project funding.

May 28, 2026

The Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership, or C-MAP, is awarding $2.5 million in direct project funding and $1 million in technical assistance to support the development and improvement of microgrids in remote and industrially significant regions.

The Alaska Center for Energy and Power is a partner in C-MAP, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity program.

Selected projects will receive $200,000-$575,000 in funding, along with up to 24 months of technical support from DOE national laboratories and other C-MAP program partners.

This funding opportunity emphasizes microgrid solutions that enhance industrial development, including support for large energy users such as critical mineral operations and enterprise‑scale computing centers.

Five topic areas for the solicitation include:

  1. Regional Microgrid Coordination: To help energy service providers from multiple communities collaborate to improve the operations of, or development opportunities for, separate microgrid power systems for their independent communities.
  2. Microgrid Integration with Large Load Energy Consumers: To support collaboration between utilities operating community microgrids and adjacent large load energy consumers that operate, or plan to operate, independent power systems.
  3. Microgrid Development: To assist individual communities with completing detailed design efforts for a new, or major retrofit of an existing, microgrid power system.
  4. Microgrid Transformation: To equip individual communities to assess, design and implement innovative microgrid improvements to operational microgrid systems.
  5. Microgrid Assessment for Industrial or Other Large Load Energy Consumers: To assist individual large energy consumers to develop or advance microgrid systems, expanding energy availability while lowering costs.

Eligible applicants include non‑profit entities such as energy cooperatives, state and local governments, federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and villages, and, for topic area 5 above, U.S. businesses with the required registrations.

Learn more about this funding opportunity and apply by Thursday, July 2.

In addition to this funding opportunity, C‑MAP offers free resources to support communities, organizations and industries at any stage of microgrid planning or development. Through Microgrid Support Services, applicants and stakeholders can request short‑term, on‑demand technical assistance to help address specific microgrid questions or challenges. C‑MAP also hosts the Community Microgrid Innovation Exchange, an online library featuring hundreds of publicly available tools, case studies, reports, webinars and other resources designed to guide users from early concept through deployment using common and replicable approaches.

Please contact cmap@nlr.gov with any questions.