May 3
Duke Reports Carbon Emissions Down 48 Percent Since 2005
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
According to Duke Energy’s 2023 Impact Report, electric generation carbon emissions are down 48 percent since 2005, and the company is moving forward to its 2050 clean energy transition strategy. Duke reported that it is on track to meet interim 50-percent carbon emission reduction targets by 2030. The company added that it expects fluctuations in carbon emissions in the short term as coal retires and other forms of generation enter service.
One of the largest solar projects in the country is moving closer to completion, and it’s not in a famously sunny state like California, Texas or even Florida. It’s in Minnesota, on former potato farms near the site of a retiring coal plant. The Sherco solar and energy-storage facility will be the largest solar project in the Upper Midwest, and the fifth largest in the U.S. by the time it’s fully completed in 2026.
WeaveGrid, a software provider whose products help enable accelerated electric vehicle (EV) adoption on the electric grid, will collaborate with Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power to launch an innovative new program for EV owners in the Alabama Power service footprint. The company is also working with Georgia Power to pilot a similar program for a limited number of EV owners in Georgia.
The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) has shared the winners of the 2024 SEPA Power Player Awards. This year’s award categories are tied to SEPA’s five critical focus areas: resilience, transportation, energy storage, emerging technology and policy, along with energy equity. SEPA’s 2024 Power Player Awards honor the contributions of utilities, regulators, policymakers and other stakeholders who played a role in advancing actionable decarbonization solutions in 2023.
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
It’s hard enough to find street parking in a city – let alone a spot where an electric vehicle can also plug in and charge. But a potential solution rests in the streetlights and lampposts that blanket city sidewalks and are already wired up to the power grid. That grid hookup makes light posts ideal hosts for curbside EV charging – so long as that charging system is cheap and easy to install, safe and simple to use, and able to withstand the vagaries of life on the street.
As more electric vehicles get on the road, cities and counties are considering how to equitably build out the public charging infrastructure needed to power such vehicles. The third quarter 2023 report on EV charging infrastructure trends from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory identifies some of the current charging disparities: Fewer public chargers are available in rural areas and disadvantaged communities compared with suburban and wealthier areas, for example.
A group of New England utilities plans to seek federal funding for a regional energy data platform that would make it easier for consumers and contractors to estimate potential savings from efficiency upgrades or new electric technologies. Clean energy advocates see this kind of service as key to supporting the rollout of Inflation Reduction Act rebates and, more broadly, to controlling costs and demand on a lower-carbon power grid.
A growing number of public power utilities are giving their customers a ground level view of their operations through Customer Academies, which give customers a unique opportunity to deepen their understanding of how their local utility works. In Missouri, Carthage Water & Electric Plant in April wrapped up its first-ever Customer Academy.
