The Iowa Energy Center board on Tuesday awarded $2.3 million to eight projects through its grant program.

The competitive grant opportunity, funded by gas and electric utilities across the state, supports projects that could provide a benefit to Iowa ratepayers and align with one of the key focus areas of the Iowa Energy Plan. The focus areas include technology-based energy research and development, energy workforce development, support for rural and underserved areas, biomass conversion, natural gas expansion in underserved areas, electric grid modernization, alternative fuel vehicles, and carbon management.

Iowa State University received seven of the eight grants awarded Tuesday and Bloomfield-based Terenc received the eighth.

The eight projects are:

• Iowa State University, $255,680: Anaerobic digestion-based microgrids that improve energy resilience without increasing costs.
• Iowa State University, $300,001: AI-assisted robotic mapping of underground infrastructure to produce a 3D map of underground utilities partnering with the city of West Des Moines and MidAmerican Energy, phase two.
• Iowa State University, $458,743: Development of all solid-state sodium batteries for storage of renewable Iowa wind energy.
• Iowa State University, $300,000: Fatigue failure mitigation in Aluminum Conductor Steel Reinforced conductors of power grids to demonstrate the efficacy of advanced surface painting techniques, laser shock painting and ultrasonic impact painting in mitigating fatigue failure of ACSR conductors.
• Terenc, $256,509: Distributed energy resource management system for rural electric cooperatives and municipal utilities to provide small utilities with affordable, easy-to-use control systems that enable real-time monitoring and coordination of distributed energy resources, such as solar arrays, battery systems and backup generators.
• Iowa State University, $296,905: Implementing a GIS tool for enhancing gridline resilience to natural hazards.
• Iowa State University, $99,999: CyMath: K-12 and college math tutoring program to strengthen Iowa’s energy workforce.
• Iowa State University, $300,000: Data-driven modeling, prediction and mitigation of electrification impacts in Iowa cold weather.