May 7
SMUD Announces 2030 Zero Carbon Plan
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Last week, the SMUD Board of Directors approved what the utility is calling the most ambitious carbon reduction plan by any large utility in the nation. This comes after the Board adopted a Climate Emergency Declaration in July 2020 and asked staff to develop a plan to expedite carbon reductions due to the growing threats of climate change.
Bidgely introduced a new UtilityAI low- and medium-income (LMI) solution that lets utilities more accurately identify LMI consumption users and deliver enhanced customer engagement to support energy savings. U.S. Department of Energy research showed low-income households face an energy burden three times higher than other households, with LMI customers representing over 25 percent of utilities’ customer base – according to ACEEE.
Salt River Project (SRP) on May 3 unveiled plans to more than double its 2025 utility-scale solar commitment to now add a total of 2,025 MW of new utility-scale solar energy to its power system by the end of fiscal year 2025, driven in part by dedicated customer demand for new renewables. This is more than 1,000 MW beyond SRP’s original 2025 commitment of 1,000 MW announced in November 2018, the Arizona-based public power utility noted.
Electric vehicles are still primarily for the well paid and well educated, according to a new study that examined data on EV ownership in the U.S. People who are planning on buying an EV share some definite demographic traits, according to a survey by BlastPoint. These traits include high incomes, college degrees, homeownership and ownership of multiple vehicles already.
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Industry News
AES announced on Tuesday a 10-year agreement to be the sole supplier of energy to three Google data centers in Virginia, providing clean power around the clock through a 500 MW portfolio of resources. Through the partnership, AES will decarbonize Google’s load in Virginia. The partnership “lays a blueprint for other companies looking to decarbonize their own operations,” Michael Terrell, Google's Director of Energy, said in a statement.
This week, applied research and commercialization institute Pecan Street released new analysis that shows utilities can save up to 41 percent on serving their residential electric vehicle charging loads by deploying smart charging technologies. Pecan Street analyzed nearly 100 homes with EVs in Pecan Street’s research network and ran different simulations of grid and utility cost impacts for various charging technology adoption scenarios.
Roughly four-fifths of U.S. coal plants are either scheduled to close by 2025 or now cost more to operate than new nearby solar or wind power would, new research shows. The May 5 analysis comes from Energy Innovation: Policy & Technology, based in San Francisco. The work highlights the accelerating pace of the clean energy transition, even aside from the social costs of coal plant pollution.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday announced plans to encourage deployment of more solar and storage in low- and moderate-income communities, including a more than $15 million commitment for technical assistance and to help underserved areas attract investment. The new initiatives and funding will help advance DOE’s justice, equity, diversity and inclusion goals, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
