SMBs are often underserved as energy customers. The sheer number of them, their varied energy profiles and diverse motivations – among other factors – make them a challenging segment for electric utilities and their partners to understand, let alone engage. At the same time, this customer segment comprises as much as 75 percent of the business customer base for some utilities.

Prepay electric service: Does it help or harm consumers? That was the question covered in a 2014 National Geographic article. In it, Carol Biedrzycki, director of a Texas-based consumer group, was quoted saying that reduced consumption patterns of prepay customers result more from absence of cash than awareness of energy use.

Battery storage has long been viewed as the “holy grail” for electricity systems that are now integrating increasing amounts of DERs, such as solar and electric vehicles. Many hold out particular hope for residential batteries because of their ability to solve problems for both consumers and the electric grid.

Why are people stopping by a utility’s payment office? “When I joined Southern [Company], it was, I guess you could say, urban myth, or urban legend, that the payment offices – especially in the small towns in the areas that we serve – people came to socialize, they went to see their neighbor, catch up on the local gossip of the day, because that's what you do in a small town, apparently,” said Lincoln Wood, project manager at Southern Company. Then they did some research.

Global wind and solar developers took 40 years to install their first trillion watts of power generation capacity, and the next trillion may be finished within the next five years. That’s the conclusion of research by BloombergNEF, which estimated the industry reached the 1-terrawatt milestone sometime in the first half of the year. That’s almost as much generation capacity as the entire U.S. power fleet.

The potential for electric vehicles to play a role on the power grid is clear. Parked vehicles could store surplus renewable power and simulate small power plants by discharging it to the grid when demand is high. There are more questions than answers, though, about how that interaction will affect drivers and their vehicles.