April 16
Duke Introduces Tool to Determine EV Savings
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Duke Energy has released a new tool that lets drivers calculate how much money they will save by driving an EV. Duke’s Electric Vehicle Savings Calculator allows drivers to make cost comparisons between driving their current vehicle and driving an EV. To use the tool, drivers will have to have a rough estimate of how many miles per gallon their car gets, how much they are paying for a gallon of gas and how many miles they drive on a typical day.
Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) on April 12 filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission an amended application seeking approval of an EV smart charging pilot program. REC said that to encourage off-peak EV charging, it proposes to implement the voluntary, experimental two-year EV pilot that is limited in scope to 200 participating residential customers in the first year.
Allconnect received a customer satisfaction score of 86 in 2020 as measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Allconnect’s scores have ranked highest among companies publicly measured by the ACSI for the last three years, from 2018-2020. ACSI is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States, and its syndicated results are calculated independently and without endorsement.
Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) received the necessary approvals for its 25-percent ownership stake in the Ocean Wind offshore wind farm. PSEG is now part-owner along with Orsted, who is the majority owner. Ocean Wind is a 1,100-megawatt offshore wind farm located 15 miles off the coast of southern New Jersey and is a key component of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s goal of having 7,500 MW of offshore wind capacity by 2035.
In the absence of federal mandates, many states throughout the country are beginning to set their own greenhouse gas (GHG) emission limits. In order for states to meet these limits, significant GHG reductions from both the commercial & industrial and residential sector are necessary. This series of articles will examine how technology intersects with supporting policies to drive residential sector decarbonization.
Energy storage could play a role in preventing the reliability challenges that both California and Texas experienced in the last year, but regulators still need to grapple with issues around compensation and technology viability, experts said at a BNEF Summit panel Tuesday. Last year, California had a few hundred MW of storage in wholesale markets, noted Carla Peterman, Southern California Edison’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Regulatory Affairs and former regulatory commissioner.
Primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its related restrictions, the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest Monthly Energy Review reported that U.S. CO2 emissions decreased by 11 percent last year, tumbling in every end-use sector. It was the first such fall since 2012, but changes varied significantly, sector by sector. Coal emissions fell 19 percent, even as natural gas-related CO2 rose 3 percent. At the same time, renewable generation helped lower overall carbon intensity, thanks to an increase in generation from wind and solar by 17 percent.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) recently launched its Community Microgrid Enablement Program to help communities identify, design and build permanent, multi-customer microgrids serving critical facilities and vulnerable customer groups. A microgrid is an electric system that can operate independently from the central energy grid. Through this new program approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E will provide technical and financial support on a prioritized basis for qualifying projects in areas with the greatest energy resilience needs.