December 1
EPRI Introduces Tool to Help Utilities Identify EV Infrastructure Needs
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released an interactive online resource designed to help electric power companies plan for the infrastructure needed to serve electric vehicles (EVs). The resource, called eRoadMAP, was developed as part of EPRI’s EVs2Scale2030 initiative, along with support from truck and car manufacturers, fleet operators, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the DOE National Labs, RMI and others.
The electrification of heat pumps and heating systems has emerged as a key strategy in the transition to net-zero. By moving away from fossil fuel-powered heating and cooling – which according to McKinsey research accounts for 2.2 billion tons of global CO2 emissions – the U.S. has the potential to reduce home heating emissions by up to 93 percent. Policymakers have aptly recognized this potential.
When cities are converting their traditional infrastructure to be more energy efficient, replacing high-pressure sodium bulbs with LED lights is usually a no-brainer due to the energy savings. But the other side of the equation, when combined with other smart streetlight tech, is a reduction in the carbon that cities emit. At Itron Inspire, Carlos Lopez, Senior Product Marketing for Smart Cities Americas at Itron, discussed how Itron’s smart streetlight products are helping cities save energy and reduce their carbon footprint.
Puget Sound Energy and AutoGrid have launched a virtual power plant, or VPP, they aim to grow to 100 MW by 2025, Aaron August, PSE’s senior vice president, chief customer and transformation officer, said in a Nov. 22 interview. With plans to add about 15,000 MW of clean energy resources to its system by 2045, including about 3,660 MW of demand-side and distributed resources, PSE aims to scale up its VPP over time, according to August.
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Industry News
U.S. consumers purchasing new light-duty cars or trucks are increasingly considering electric vehicles, which are on pace to make up nine percent of sales this year according to data from EV Hub, a tracker run by Atlas Public Policy. EVs, including plug-in hybrids, accounted for 7.3 percent sales in 2022. Combined U.S. sales of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery-electric vehicles reached 17.7 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales in the third quarter, according to the Energy Information Administration.
A pair of community microgrid projects in Massachusetts are already helping to inspire similar projects in the state before construction has even begun. The city of Chelsea and Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood are each developing projects that supporters hope can become powerful case studies for the potential of microgrids to increase resilience and create other benefits for residents.
A total of 16,000 randomly selected customers on Oahu and Hawaii Island will test new time-of-use (TOU) rates beginning in February 2024, as part of Hawaiian Electric’s Shift and Save pilot program. That program will run for a year, and recently added 4,000 households and businesses to its total. All participants will be notified by email or postal mail by Dec. 5, 2023.
The recipe for a fossil-free future includes a big dollop of solar — and in recent years, that solar has started popping up all around the U.S. But where, exactly, are the country’s major solar installations located? The map below, created from the U.S. Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Database, shows the sites of ground-mounted solar installations in the country with a capacity of 1 megawatt or more.
