The New York State PSC recently gave Con Edison approval to run a pilot program designed to reduce residential and commercial customer demand for natural gas. Demand for natural gas in Con Edison’s service territory has increased substantially. This has led to significant increases in the peak day demand during the winter heating season for customers that require uninterruptable supply.

Landis+Gyr released Command Center 7.3, which expands functionality for residential advanced meters to help utilities with reliability and planning operations. This latest update of the company's advanced metering network operating software includes updates to the user interface, enhanced support for smart sensors and devices, and more flexibility for capturing additional metering data.

Electric utilities in the state of Washington are in compliance with state conservation and renewable energy requirements, according to a recent report from the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. As a condition of the state’s EIA, IOUs are required to obtain a certain percentage of their electricity from eligible renewable resources, including wind, solar and hydro. So, the three qualifying utilities – Avista, Pacific Power and Puget Sound Energy – filed reports detailing their renewable portfolios.

The 8th annual Smart Grid Customer Education Symposium will address the dynamically changing utility-customer relationship and how utilities can emerge as leaders in both technology innovation and customer satisfaction. The Symposium will discuss how these areas intersect as we define the utility of the future. Please join us on October 15, 2018 at CenterPoint’s Corporate Headquarters in Houston, Texas.

Chicago has sweltered under several heat waves this summer, pushing the city’s power grid toward its capacity each time. The manufacturer of the city’s new fleet of electric buses says the vehicles could help relieve some of that burden on the grid. “Proterra’s Catalyst buses can act as a grid resource, although it is up to individual transit agencies, like CTA, to determine how to utilize those capabilities,” a Proterra spokesperson said.

Green Mountain Power’s commitment to innovation delivered bigger savings to customers as New England recently hit a new yearly peak for power demand. GMP’s growing network of stored energy reduced demand on the grid as temperatures soared and offset more than $600,000 in costs for customers. That’s $100,000 more than during the earlier ISO-NE peak set on July 5.