Funding Opportunities

An industrial warehouse in a rural area is equipped with a large array of solar panels on its roof. Surrounding the building are trucks, a van, and open fields.

Integrated Community Energy Planning Approach

The ICEP process will bring together utility, community, state, and federal level data to identify hotspots of greatest energy burden, disaster risks, threats to security and systems, long-duration outages, and grid congestion. The effort will be a replicable pilot and scalable model for viable and innovative energy planning that meets local communities’ needs.

Informed by a data-driven prioritization model developed by the Louisiana State University (LSU) Center of Energy Studies (CES), the ICEP process will identify priority locations for resilience and critical facility microgrids in communities across the state.

DENR is opening a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) in early June 2025 to provide grants to support collaborative planning by utilities, community organizations, emergency responders, and local governments to establish microgrid hubs that best serve their community needs.

Traditionally, energy resilience planning has focused on grid infrastructure, such as wires, poles, and equipment. ICEP is focused on the people of Louisiana by identifying the key needs of service beyond the electric meter.

Community Planning Phase

In the Community Planning Phase of the HERO ICEP process, communities can apply for a grant from the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources (DENR) to conduct a community-driven planning process in coordination with local utilities and stakeholders.

Community plans are expected to include:

  • Lead applicants: The lead applicant for the grant can be either a unit of local government (municipality or parish), a utility (municipal electric utility, investor-owned utility, and rural electric cooperative), or a critical facility (port, healthcare/medical, military, etc.).
  • Required partners: Each application is required to include both a unit of local government and the corresponding utility that serves the same area as the local government unit.
  • Estimated grant award: The state will provide funding up to $125,000 for each community plan, which will be made in the form of a grant from DENR. The subrecipient will be responsible for providing a minimum of $25,000 in cost match.
  • Expected activities: Local government and utility partnerships will be expected to convene local workshops and working groups of stakeholders to:
    • Identify resilience needs
    • Identify critical facilities, organized by the impact of outages of such facilities
    • Develop initial ideas and strategies to increase electric grid resilience for identified community needs
    • Incorporate community goals and plans
    • Compile relevant information into a standard report template to serve as input for statewide resilience planning and HERO hub solicitation
  • Technical assistance: DENR will assign a program liaison to provide technical assistance throughout the planning process. The program liaison will provide guidance, facilitation support for convenings, and supplemental data and resources to support the planning process.
  • Application process: Interested local partners may submit an application that outlines their project plan, partners, and anticipated activities. DENR will prioritize community applications based on a comprehensive set of data-driven factors impacting grid reliability and security, economic needs, and geography.
  • Timing: The application window for communities to develop a community plan will open in early June 2025. Awards are anticipated to be made by September 2025.

Back to top

Statewide Planning Phase

In the Statewide Planning Phase of the HERO ICEP process, stakeholders from across the state will participate in working groups to anticipate future challenges of reliability, resource adequacy, and resiliency based on load growth, storm trends, capabilities, and constraints that impact the whole state. The Statewide Planning Phase will also collect input from the Community Planning Phase and state-funded assessments and studies.

Inputs to the Statewide Planning Phase, developed by the LSU-CES, will be collected from the following sources:

  • Community plans from the ICEP Community Planning Phase and corresponding analyses
  • Mapping of resilience needs from the Community Planning Phase
  • Grid assessments and studies
  • Innovative grid distribution services analysis
  • Non-wire alternative capabilities analysis

Outputs from the Statewide Planning Phase include:

  • A statewide grid resilience plan
  • Development of a selection process for HERO hubs
  • Development of minimum requirements (capabilities, functionality) for HERO hubs
  • Development of a distributed energy resources grid services roadmap
  • Development of workforce development pathways

How do I participate? Working groups will be selected in 2026. Sign up on our mailing list to receive more information when it becomes available.

Back to top

HERO Anticipated Process and Timeline Graphic June 2025 October 2026