May 12
TVA Announces Plan to Double Solar Energy Capacity
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
On Wednesday, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board of Directors outlined its plan to double its solar energy capacity as it celebrated its 90th anniversary. As a way to address the region’s record-growing demand, the TVA said it would continue to aggressively invest in current electric generation sources, while building new ones.
Texas lawmakers are considering spending billions to build gas-fired power plants, but a report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficiency Economy (ACEEE) concludes efficiency and demand response resources would cost less while adding more flexibility to the grid.
A ride-hail electrification pilot program launched in spring 2022 by California community choice aggregator Peninsula Clean Energy, Lyft and one of its Express Drive rental partners, Flexdrive, reached a key milestone by providing more than 250,000 electric vehicle rides across more than three million all-electric miles driven in the Bay Area.
ComEd has taken proactive measures to ensure reliable energy supply, as severe weather patterns becoming increasingly frequent and high summer temperatures putting strain on the electric grid. Recently, the company presented its summer readiness plan and future initiatives to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC).
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
Chris Bowe was preparing for his daughter’s ninth birthday party in February when a drenching storm knocked out power to his neighborhood in Hayward, California. Minutes before the party began, Bowe connected his electric Ford F-150 Lightning to a panel in his garage, sending electricity from the pickup truck to his house.
One of the key themes that emerged during six recent regional meetings on building out a national electric vehicle charging infrastructure included the importance of states engaging electric utilities as part of a broad range of stakeholders needed to build out the network.
Hawaii’s recent regulation ordering innovative rate designs gives a strong signal to states still debating time-of-use, or TOU, rates that the energy transition requires new pricing approaches, rate design authorities said. Hawaii’s Advanced Rate Design proceeding also introduced a new approach to fixed charges based on its new and more limited definition of the fixed generation, transmission and other costs to serve customers.
When you think of electric utilities, the words fast, nimble, tech-savvy or cuddly probably don’t come to mind. Nor do those qualities often apply to the startups dragging the old grid into a cleaner, less centralized future. But relative newcomer Octopus Energy quickly proved itself to have all those traits and more and took over the U.K. electricity market in the process.
