USDA Is Offering $410M in 40%-Forgivable Energy Loans. Solar and Wind Generation Did Not Make the List.

There is a program sitting in grantseeking feeds right now with a $410 million headline, a $1 million floor, a $100 million ceiling, and roughly 100 anticipated awards. It is not a grant program. It is a loan program where USDA may forgive up to 40 percent of the balance — and the clock on the Letter of Interest window runs out on October 9, 2026 at 11:59 a.m. Eastern, a deadline set in the morning rather than at midnight, which has already caught applicants off guard.

RUS-PART-2026, the Powering Affordable Reliable Technology (PART) Energy Program, posted September 8, 2026 under Assistance Listing 10.757. The Rural Utilities Service is soliciting Letters of Interest for loan applications, and it is processing them on a rolling, first-come, first-processed basis in the order received. There is no panel date to wait for. The queue is the competition.

The eligibility line that will decide most projects

USDA's Federal Register notice and its own program materials describe PART as financing infrastructure that produces electricity from hydro, geothermal, or biomass energy sources, plus energy storage systems that make intermittent renewable systems more reliable.

Solar and wind do not appear on that generation list.

This matters because Section 317 of the Rural Electrification Act — the authority PART operates under, as amended by Section 22001 of the Inflation Reduction Act — is conventionally described as covering solar, hydro, wind, geothermal, and biomass. The statutory universe is broader than the round USDA is running.

The practical read, and the one to confirm directly with RUS before you invest in an LOI: a cooperative that wants to build solar or wind generation under PART appears to be on the wrong side of this round's scope, while a cooperative that wants to build battery storage charged by existing or planned solar or wind appears to be squarely inside it. Storage that firms up intermittent resources is the explicit design intent. Trade coverage of the program has described battery energy storage systems paired with hydro, geothermal, biomass, wind, or solar as eligible, alongside new or upgraded transmission and distribution lines and equipment such as microgrids associated with eligible projects.

If your project is solar or wind generation, do not spend the next three weeks drafting. Spend one call confirming scope, then redirect to a program that fits.

What forgiveness actually costs you

The forgiveness provision is the reason this program reads like a grant to people skimming opportunity feeds, and it is also the reason it is harder than a grant.

Section 22001 of the IRA appropriated $1 billion, available until September 30, 2031, for the cost of loans under Section 317, and it permits USDA to forgive up to 50 percent of a qualifying loan. RUS is making approximately $410 million available in this round and is offering forgiveness of up to 40 percent.

Both gaps are worth noticing. Less than half the statutory appropriation is on the table, and the forgiveness rate sits ten points below the statutory ceiling. Neither is an error — agencies routinely reserve authority across fiscal years and price subsidy conservatively — but a borrower modeling this deal should model 40 percent, not 50, and should not assume the remaining authority arrives on a schedule that helps a project already in design.

More importantly: forgiveness happens after the project is finished and every condition is met. The IRA's completion requirement runs to the end of fiscal 2031. That is roughly five years from now, which sounds generous until you price interconnection queues, supply chain lead times on turbines or battery racks, and the permitting path for a hydro or geothermal facility. A project that slips past the statutory completion date is a project carrying a full-balance federal loan instead of a 60 percent one.

Underwrite the deal as if forgiveness never arrives. If it does, it is upside. If your capital plan only pencils with the 40 percent, you are taking construction-schedule risk with the entire benefit.

The capital stack, precisely

Two loan structures with different math:

Project Loans finance up to 75 percent of a project's total capitalized costs. The borrower must supply at least 25 percent of the total capitalized cost in the form of cash or equity investments, which may not be derived from debt instruments. That last clause is the one that disqualifies otherwise-solid applicants. You cannot lever the match.

System Loans may cover up to 100 percent of total project costs.

And under Section 306F of the RE Act, the Agency may finance up to 100 percent of the costs of projects benefiting Substantially Underserved Trust Areas (SUTA). To get that treatment, an applicant must submit a complete application including everything required under 7 CFR part 1700, subpart D, and must explicitly identify the discretionary authorities within subpart D it is asking to have applied. SUTA relief is not conferred by describing your service territory — it is conferred by naming the authorities you want invoked. Tribal utilities and Alaska Native Corporations leaving that section blank are surrendering the single most valuable provision in the notice.

Interest terms follow standard RUS Treasury-rate practice: rates set daily by Treasury, with the borrower selecting interest rate terms for each advance from the published terms, and no interest rate cap.

Who counts as an applicant

RUS will accept LOIs and applications from Operating Utilities, a category that is broader than most readers assume:

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

NRECA's regulatory affairs director, Luke Theriot, called it "another great opportunity from RUS for electric cooperatives to diversify their energy portfolios," and urged applicants to prepare materials promptly given the first-come, first-processed structure.

The operative word across that list is Operating Utilities. A developer without utility status, a community nonprofit without operations, or a tribal entity that has not stood up a utility arm has a structural problem this deadline will not solve. The fix is a partnership with a qualifying operating utility, not a standalone LOI.

Three weeks is enough time, but only for the right applicants

Confirm SAM registration and your UEI first. Nothing else in this process matters if registration has lapsed. Renewals take longer than people expect, and the LOI window closes in the morning of October 9.

Treat position in the queue as scoreable. A rolling, first-come evaluation means a complete LOI submitted in week one is competing against a thinner field than the same LOI submitted on the last morning. With a $100 million ceiling against a $410 million round, four maximum-size deals would consume the money.

Read the $410 million figure carefully. USDA describes it as appropriated budget authority, which is not identical to gross loan volume in every federal credit program. With roughly 100 anticipated awards against awards of $1 million to $100 million, the arithmetic works out close to $410 million in loans — but if your project sizing depends on the distinction, ask RUS directly rather than inferring it.

Note where the notice lives next year. USDA stated in the August 4, 2026 Federal Register notice (document 2026-15795) that in future years this opportunity will be announced only on the agency website and grants.gov, with no Federal Register notice. Anyone whose funding-scan process depends on the Federal Register should fix that now.

PART is the second RUS credit program this fall worth a rural utility's attention, alongside the $175 million ARC program and its own Letter of Interest gate. Both are symptoms of the same shift: federal support for rural energy infrastructure increasingly arrives as credit with a forgiveness feature rather than as an award, and the diligence a lender expects is not the diligence a grant reviewer expects. For organizations sorting which of these instruments their balance sheet can actually carry, Granted can help map the program's requirements against what you have ready today.