December 3
Southern California Edison Quadruples Rebate for Used EVs
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Southern California Edison announced this week that it is offering a $4,000 rebate to income-qualified customers who buy or lease pre-owned electric vehicles. SCE has been offering a $1,000 rebate through its Pre-Owned EV Rebate program to residential customers who purchase or lease a used EV. But the electric company has now quadrupled the rebate amount for those who either live in a state-designated, income-qualified household or who are enrolled in certain state or federal income assistance programs.
A new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and New Buildings Institute (NBI) finds that electric water heaters in multifamily buildings cause less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of gas-fired products. The report shows that converting gas-fired water heaters to electric heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) would cut the greenhouse gas emissions the equipment is responsible for by an average of 58 percent.
Electric vehicles (EVs) could finish 2021 as five percent of new car sales in the U.S., according to market observers, and are expected to make up a growing share in the years to come. Driven by city and state electrification goals, and now supported by federal infrastructure dollars, the years ahead will be a critical time for utilities working to drive beneficial electrification.
Seeking to improve energy reliability in the Hoosier state, Duke Energy Indiana filed a six-year plan with state regulators last week to spur an overhaul of the grid through smart technology and infrastructure updates. This, the company states, could improve the resilience of a system providing electricity to more than 860,000 customers in its service area.
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Industry News
Massachusetts’ new three-year energy efficiency plan would substantially increase efforts to lower energy costs and improve health and comfort for lower-income households and residents of color. The $668 million plan awaiting approval from the state Department of Public Utilities lays out strategies the state’s ratepayer-funded energy efficiency program intends to implement from 2022 to 2024.
Can a government program created to back industrial-scale energy infrastructure help get efficient smart appliances and solar-battery systems into the hands of Americans who typically would not be able to afford them? Jigar Shah, head of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), sees a way to make it happen by rethinking the definition of the type of infrastructure needed to achieve a decarbonized grid.
PG&E has partnered with distributed energy resources (DER) control firm Sunverge Energy and LG Electronics to implement a virtual power plant (VPP) using consumer energy storage systems for grid reliability in Northern and Central California. The VPP will be created as part of PG&E’s Battery Storage Pilot Program, which is designed to test the role of storage in diversifying the utility’s energy mix for grid stability and decarbonization.
By connecting the batteries of parked electric school buses to the grid, a first-of-its-kind electric school bus charging hub aims to provide enough backup power to support up to 10,000 homes. Nuvve plans to build a hub with 200, fast-charging stations at Blue Bird Corporation’s delivery facility in Fort Valley, Georgia. When parked, multiple buses can serve as a virtual power plant to create capacity of up to 25 MW.
