SPX’s Waukesha Electric Systems and several grant participant companies intend to make $10.8m in contributions to the project, bringing the total value to $21.5m.
Christopher Kearney, chairman, president and CEO of SPX, said: “Enhancing the efficiency, capacity and reliability of America’s energy infrastructure is absolutely critical to our country’s economic future and well being, so we are honored to work with the Department of Energy and our grant partners toward that end.
“As the lead company on this project, we look forward to leveraging our deep expertise in developing innovative power transformers to help advance the US power grid for the benefit of future generations.”
The Waukesha grant is part of a programme announced in late November by the DOE, which includes $620m worth of funding for projects around the country to demonstrate advanced smart grid technologies and integrated systems that will help build a smarter and efficient electrical grid.
SPX’s Waukesha Electric Systems is expected to develop, build, test and install a 28MVA, 69kV fault current limiting superconducting transformer by the end of 2012.
