April 14
Duke Energy Launches Home Retrofit Pilot in Charlotte
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Duke Energy Carolinas said on Tuesday it is launching an income-qualified energy efficiency home rehabilitation pilot program with the City of Charlotte. The High Energy Use Pilot program will help income-qualified customers with high energy use get home repairs as well as retrofitting to improve energy efficiency and housing safety. Duke said it will invest an estimated $4 million in the region for energy retrofits for approximately 500 customers.
As we collectively gear up to install heat pumps at an unprecedented rate, many utilities have questions on where to start. Manufactured homes might be a good place, and we’ll give you an example of a carefully planned program design that led to big savings. First, let’s look at some of the opportunities and obstacles of installing heat pumps in manufactured homes.
Today, utilities have more responsibility than keeping the lights on. They’re on the front lines of an evolving energy and climate landscape, tasked with ensuring grid resilience, meeting decarbonization goals and supporting economy-wide electrification. New legislation will help finance clean energy projects, complete with incentives for clean energy technologies like EVs, solar and storage.
Virtual Peaker, a cloud-based SaaS company empowering modern utilities with the friendliest distributed energy platform on the planet, has been selected by Rochester Public Utilities, a municipally-owned electric and water utility located in Rochester, Minnesota, as the preferred software platform to launch an innovative Bring Your Own Thermostat (BYOT) program to help reduce energy consumption during periods of high demand.
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Industry News
Car buyers in the market for something shiny, new and electric are seeing their options grow. Nearly three dozen battery-powered models are now on display at the New York International Auto Show, including Ram’s hulking 1500 Rev pickup and Hyundai’s award-winning Ioniq 6 sedan. Even a city bus and utility bucket truck parked on the plush carpet can run on electricity.
According to a new corporate sustainability report released by Hawaiian Electric last week, 37 percent of single-family homes across the five islands it serves had rooftop solar at the end of 2022, and Oahu’s first grid-scale solar and storage project was operational. This significant boost on the renewable front was further backed by the retirement of the state’s last coal power source, the AES coal plant.
If Jonathan Lockwood had to spring for a new roof, he was determined to find a versatile cover that could go beyond just keeping his 1981 townhome dry. He also wanted to slash his escalating electric bill. Aware that greenlighting traditional rooftop solar panels would be a tough slog in his hyper-regulated planned community, he opted for a lower-profile product that integrates solar technology into nailable asphalt shingles.
Walmart plans to build out an electric vehicle charging network across the U.S., adding chargers to thousands of sites by 2030, according to a Thursday press release. The company, which already has nearly 1,300 EV charging stations at 280 locations, plans to bring chargers to Walmart Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets, as well as Sam’s Clubs.
