December 18
Con Edison Test Drives Electric School Buses
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Con Edison has begun using the batteries on five electric school buses to provide power to its customers, marking the first time in New York State that electricity has flowed from buses into a utility's grid. By day, the e-buses from Lion Electric carry students to an elementary school in White Plains. They displace runs by buses that burn diesel, meaning better air quality in the Westchester County community.
Ameren Illinois intends to forego approximately $48.7 million in revenue next year, cutting rates for its customers for the third consecutive year and shaving around $12 per year off the delivery portion of electric bills for its average residential customers. The new rates are set to take effect in January 2021 since the Illinois Commerce Commission has approved the plan.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy released its 2020 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard on Wednesday, ranking California as its leading state for the first time since 2016, when it tied with Massachusetts. This is the first report since 2010 that Massachusetts has not held the top spot. California’s rank was attributed to its leadership in building electrification, with dozens of California cities adopting net-zero building energy codes.
According to Reimagining the Grid, a new white paper published by Southern California Edison (SCE), fundamental changes in how the electric power grid is planned, designed, built and operated are necessary to meet future challenges that are arriving bearing down on us today. SCE says those challenges coming about due to changes in electricity use and in the sources of energy connected to the grid.
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Industry News
The U.S. solar industry hasn’t completely returned to its pre-pandemic prosperity, but solar has still grown enough to claim the greatest share of electricity generation installations in 2020. Solar has accounted for 43 percent of electricity-generating capacity additions in the U.S. so far this year, even as the industry struggled to work around coronavirus shutdown orders and pandemic-adjusted timelines, according to the Solar Market Insight report released Tuesday by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The number of electric vehicle models available to consumers is expected to more than triple in the next three years, from roughly 40 to 127 in the United States, as battery prices fall, charging infrastructure spreads and adoption rises, according to Dan Bowermaster, Senior Program Manager for Electric Transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute. It takes almost two decades for the U.S. auto fleet to turn over, “so this is not like an iPhone adoption.”
While electric vehicles are relatively uncommon in Chicago, city officials expect their popularity to grow dramatically in coming decades. And while electric cars are registered throughout the city, they, along with the city’s charging stations, are most heavily concentrated in the city’s affluent and mostly white North Side. As of 2018, 70 percent of all public charging stations were located in just three community areas.
California’s shift toward ending natural gas use in new buildings is reaching a decision point. Last week, the California Energy Commission held its latest workshop on updating the state’s Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards, which will set the energy baselines builders must adhere to in new construction from 2023 onward. Amid the complexities of this process, a key point of contention has emerged.
