USDA Reopened the IRA's Rural Energy Loan Money as PART — Same Statute, 40% Forgiveness Instead of 60%, and LOIs Reviewed in the Order They Arrive

The Rural Utilities Service published a Federal Register notice on August 4, 2026 announcing the Powering Affordable Reliable Technology (PART) Energy Program — approximately $410 million in appropriated budget authority for partially forgivable loans to build rural electric generation and storage.

The notice itself is barely 300 words. It is one of the shortest funding announcements USDA has published this year, and it ends with an unusual housekeeping note: in future years this opportunity will only be announced on the agency website and grants.gov, without a Federal Register notice. If you have relied on the Federal Register as your tripwire for RUS electric program money, this is the last year that works.

The substance lives in the grants.gov record under RUS-PART-2026 (Assistance Listing 10.757), and the substance is more interesting than the notice.

This is PACE money, restructured

PART is carried out under Section 22001 of the Inflation Reduction Act, which amended Section 9003 of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 and appropriated funds "for the cost of loans under Section 317 of the Rural Electrification Act." That is the identical statutory basis as the Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program that RUS launched in May 2023 with $1 billion in budget authority.

Same statute. Same Section 317 authority. Same $1 million floor and $100 million ceiling per award. Same Section 306F pathway allowing up to 100% financing for projects benefiting Substantially Underserved Trust Areas. Same September 30, 2031 outer date.

What changed is the terms — and the changes cut in one direction.

Two of those rows deserve more than a table cell.

The equity tiers are gone. Under PACE, a project owned by a federally recognized Tribe or an Alaska Native Corporation, or one serving a majority-Tribal area, a U.S. territory, or a Compact of Free Association state, qualified for 60% forgiveness. Under PART, that same project qualifies for up to 40% — the ceiling everyone now shares. On a $50 million project, that is a $10 million swing in grant-equivalent value. Tribal utilities and territorial applicants who modeled a PACE-era capital stack need to rerun it before they file.

The Section 306F SUTA authority survives, and it matters: for projects benefiting Substantially Underserved Trust Areas, RUS may finance up to 100% of project costs rather than 75%. That reduces the equity requirement to zero but does not restore the forgiveness percentage. Financing coverage and forgiveness are different levers, and only one of them was preserved.

Wind and solar are out as primary generation. USDA's announcement describes eligible infrastructure as producing electricity from hydro, geothermal, or biomass, plus energy storage systems that make intermittent renewable generation more reliable. Storage paired with an existing wind or solar resource remains financeable; a new solar farm as the generating asset does not appear to be. This is consistent with the direction USDA has taken across its energy portfolio this cycle, including the REAP restrictions on solar that reshaped that program earlier in the year.

Read the eligibility list before you rule yourself out

Nearly every secondary write-up of PART has described it as a program for electric cooperatives. The grants.gov eligibility text is considerably wider. RUS will accept LOIs and applications from Operating Utilities in each of the following categories:

• For-profit organizations
• State or local governments
• Indian Tribes as defined by the Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act of 1994, including wholly owned arms and instrumentalities
• Alaska Native Corporations, including regional and village corporations under ANCSA
• Nonprofits
• Distribution electric cooperatives and generation-and-transmission electric cooperatives
• Certificated electric utilities

Municipal utilities, public power districts, tribally owned utilities, and investor-owned utilities serving rural territory all have a path here. The binding constraint is the Section 317(b) requirement that power generated from the eligible renewable source be for resale to rural and nonrural residents — this is a utility-scale generation program, not a behind-the-meter or self-consumption program.

The loan structure decides your equity requirement

RUS offers two instruments, and choosing between them is the first real decision.

Project Loans finance up to 75% of a project's total capitalized costs. The awardee must supply at least 25% in cash or equity investments that may not be derived from debt instruments — a restriction that quietly disqualifies the most common financing move in the sector. You cannot borrow your match. Under PACE, RUS had discretion to let applicants meet the equity requirement using tax credits or direct-pay elections in lieu of credits, with additional credit support required pending receipt; expect to negotiate that point rather than assume it.

System Loans may cover 100% of project costs, but are available only to currently operating electric utilities, and they come secured by a perfected senior lien on all of the applicant's existing and after-acquired assets. For a co-op already inside an RUS mortgage or an indenture, this is familiar territory. For a newer entity, it is a much larger commitment than the project itself.

The forgiveness does not arrive until the end. Under the PACE structure that PART inherits, forgiveness occurs only after the project has been completed and RUS has confirmed every other award condition is satisfied. Projects must be complete by September 30, 2031 for the forgiveness to attach — a statutory IRA date, not an agency preference, and one that shrinks every year this money sits unobligated.

The rolling-review clause is the strategic story

Here is the sentence that should reorganize your calendar:

RUS will process and evaluate complete LOI on a rolling basis in the order they are received.

That is not how PACE worked, and it is not how most federal competitions work. There is no submission deadline that functions as a starting gun with everyone evaluated together against a published rubric. There is a queue.

The window opens at 11:59 a.m. Eastern on September 8, 2026 and closes at 11:59 a.m. Eastern on October 9, 2026. Note the a.m. on both ends. A morning open and a morning close is unusual enough that it will catch teams who read "11:59" and assumed midnight — and in a queue-ordered process, showing up on day 22 instead of day 1 is a real cost, not a rounding error.

RUS anticipates roughly 100 awards against the $410 million in budget authority. Worth understanding clearly: budget authority is the subsidy cost of the loans, not the loan volume. Under PACE, $1 billion in budget authority translated to roughly $2.7 billion in projected lending capacity. PART's actual lending capacity is therefore likely well above $410 million, though RUS has not published a projection, and the forgivable portion is what consumes budget authority fastest.

Practical sequencing, working backward from September 8:

1. Confirm SAM.gov registration and your UEI are active now. An expired registration is the single most common reason a first-day filer becomes a third-week filer.
2. Decide Project Loan versus System Loan before the window opens. The equity question and the lien question have different internal approval chains, and neither resolves in a week.
3. Source the 25% in non-debt equity if you are taking a Project Loan. Cash or equity investment only. Board resolutions take time.
4. Determine SUTA applicability. If any part of your service territory qualifies, the 100% financing path under Section 306F changes your capital stack materially.
5. Have the LOI drafted and internally approved before September 8. In a rolling queue, a complete LOI filed in the first hours is strictly better than a marginally better one filed in October.

The word complete in "complete LOI" is doing work. An incomplete submission does not hold your place — it gets you a request for more information while later, complete filings move ahead.

What this tells you about the rest of the RUS portfolio

PART is the third act in the story of the IRA's rural energy appropriations. New ERA carried $9.7 billion, PACE carried $1 billion, and REAP carried the small-scale on-farm money that has been repeatedly restructured around solar restrictions and farmland-use policy. PART is what remains of the PACE tranche, reissued under a name that swaps "Clean Energy" for "Reliable Technology" and a resource list that reflects the swap.

For an applicant, the ideological framing is largely noise. The signal is this: the statute is unchanged, the money is real, the forgiveness is smaller than it was, the deadline is a queue rather than a gate, and the 2031 completion wall does not move. A project that can reach commercial operation comfortably before September 30, 2031, and that runs on water, heat, biomass, or batteries, has a better financing offer available right now than it will have in any subsequent round — because the trend line on this program's terms has been going one direction for three years.

Tracking RUS electric program notices, rolling-review LOI windows, and the funding opportunities that are about to stop appearing in the Federal Register entirely? Granted monitors federal announcements across agencies and flags the ones your organization is eligible for.