August 16
Can Free At-Home EV Charging Boost Grid Stability?
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Ford Motor Company and TXU Energy, a Texas electricity provider and subsidiary of Vistra, have teamed up to create a new retail energy offering for Ford electric SUV and truck customers in Texas – offering customers credit back on their bills for charging during off-peak hours. The TXU Energy Free EV Miles program offers participating Ford EV customers the opportunity to charge their vehicle entirely at home at “essentially no cost” during off-peak hours.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) aspires to have a carbon-free energy system by 2050, which includes the deployment and installation of 10 GW of solar by 2035. To support the expansion of our renewable energy fleet, TVA will need to add increasingly more energy storage systems to our resource mix. Energy storage technologies increase grid flexibility and help enhance the benefits of renewable energy resources.
Electrification is a key component in our decarbonization efforts and has tremendous potential across many applications. But what applications should utilities with limited time and resources focus on for the best outcomes? The factors that determine success, and the questions utilities should ask themselves, can be categorized as follows.
Avangrid reached a milestone this summer, as the company has now installed 9 gigawatts (GW) of capacity at its onshore wind and solar sites. Avangrid has 75 onshore wind and solar projects spread across 22 states in its portfolio. The sites produce energy for 2.3 million U.S. homes. Construction progress at multiple Avangrid projects this summer helped the company reach this 9 GW milestone.
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Industry News
Massachusetts has awarded $53 million – and announced plans for additional funding – to allow affordable housing operators to execute energy efficiency retrofits that are expected to reduce carbon emissions, cut energy bills, and create healthier, more comfortable homes for residents. The state in late July announced the second round of awards in the Affordable Housing Decarbonization Grant Program.
Wind electricity generation set a new record in April and exceeded coal-fired generation in both March and April, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). EIA’s 2024 Monthly Energy Review revealed that U.S. wind generation exceeded coal-fired generation in March for the first time since April 2023. But this is the first time that U.S. wind generation has exceeded coal-fired generation for two months in a row.
Is community solar going to grow or contract over the next few years? That may largely depend on legislation in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the latest report released by Wood Mackenzie in collaboration with the Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA).
Construction is underway in St. Paul, Minnesota on a major affordable housing development that will combine solar, geothermal and all-electric appliances to create one of the region’s largest net-zero communities. Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity broke ground in June on a four-block, 147-unit project on the site of a former golf course that’s being redeveloped by the city and its port authority, which made the decision to forgo gas hookups.
