Overview
- The Department of Energy awarded CenterPoint Energy a $50 million SPARK grant for Project Talon, which officials announced Thursday at a joint news conference in Houston.
- Project Talon is valued at about $176 million with CenterPoint committing roughly $126 million as the required cost share for the federal funding.
- CenterPoint said the work will install advanced substation gear and Grid‑Enhancing Technologies and use reconductoring on existing rights‑of‑way to increase how much power lines can carry.
- CenterPoint and DOE expect the upgrades to begin delivering reliability benefits to Houston customers by late 2029 and the company says the work will support local construction jobs during installation.
- The grant is part of DOE’s $5.25 billion SPARK program that funds 31 projects nationwide to reconductor roughly 1,500 miles of lines, deploy GETs across about 21,000 miles of infrastructure, and add about 23 gigawatts of capacity.