August 27
Landis+Gyr to Deploy 1.2 Million Smart Meters for U.S. Utilities
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
U.S. utility companies Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities Company (KU) have signed a five-year contract with Landis+Gyr for the provision of smart meters and smart grid infrastructure and technologies. The contract includes the supply of 930,000 smart electricity meters, 300,000 gas modules and an IoT network for connectivity. The project is part of grid modernization and transition to renewable energy-based grid networks by the two utility companies.
Minnesota electric cooperatives have quietly emerged as laboratories for clean grid innovation, outpacing investor-owned utilities on smart meter installations, time-based pricing pilots and experimental storage solutions. “Co-ops have innovation in their DNA,” said David Ranallo, a spokesperson for Great River Energy, a generation and distribution cooperative that supplies power to 28 member utilities – making it one of the state’s largest co-op players.
CenterPoint Energy Indiana South seeks to begin two power purchase agreements (PPAs) capable of providing another 335 MW of solar energy to aid its long-term energy transition plan, one with Oriden and one with Origis Energy. Under the arrangements as sought, Oriden would provide CenterPoint with 185 MWs for the next 15 years, while Origis would provide 150 MWs for 20 years.
Investor-owned utility Southern California Edison (SCE) is tackling a host of near-term and urgent climate adaptation measures as it becomes clear that the impacts of climate change are being felt sooner than anticipated, utility President and CEO Kevin Payne told regulators on Wednesday. Along with programs to prevent wildfires and other measures that SCE will focus on for the next several years, the utility also has its eye on longer-term challenges.
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Industry News
U.S. project developers commissioned 9,915 MW of clean power capacity over the first six months of the year, a record for new clean power installations, according to new data released by the American Clean Power Association (ACP). The association’s Clean Power Quarterly 2021 Q2 Market Report, which provides a snapshot of the latest U.S. utility wind, solar and battery storage industry activity, showed the six-month total of clean energy projects represents a 17-percent increase over the first six months of 2020.
Battery storage is on the cusp of a major growth spurt, according to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The number of large-scale battery storage systems operating in the U.S. increased 28 percent in 2019 and is likely to continue to grow based on preliminary 2020 data, according to the report.
Siemens has made a commitment to expand its manufacturing capabilities for EV charging infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years. The company says it will produce over one million electric vehicle chargers for the U.S. to support the country’s transition to electric vehicles. The announcement follows President Joe Biden’s recent order aimed at ensuring that 50 percent of all vehicle sales in the U.S. be electric by 2030.
Connecticut regulators have finalized new rules paving the way for a major expansion of battery storage and electric vehicle charging, part of a broader effort to modernize the state’s electric grid. Since the wide-ranging “grid mod” proceedings began in fall 2019, all but one of the 11 subject-area tracks in the docket have either concluded or made significant progress.
