December 8
Puget Sound Energy to Double Clean Energy Portfolio by 2025
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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According to the latest reports from Puget Sound Energy (PSE), the Washington-based company expects to nearly double its clean energy portfolio to more than 43 million MW hours of clean energy by 2025. If accurate, that would mean power for the equivalent of more than one million homes – a significant gain on the company’s original forecasts from its Clean Energy Implementation Plan (CEIP).
The Alliance to Save Energy released the Demand is the New Supply – Affordable Grid Stability through Demand-Side Solutions paper on day two of the Conference of Parties in Dubai. The white paper, which was developed by DNV and supported by Carrier, identifies the critical importance of active energy efficiency solutions in the residential built environment if the United States is to achieve a reliable, affordable and equitable energy transition.
Despite significant investments in modernizing the electric grid, 41 percent of consumers are more concerned with power outages today compared to 10 years ago, and only 10 percent are less concerned, according to a new survey from the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC). The Extreme Weather and Power Outages: Communicating with Customers survey is the third installment in SECC’s new series of short-form surveys, the Smart Energy Snapshot Series, which debuted in June.
Xcel Energy and Ford Motor Co. have partnered to assist business customers in transitioning their fleets to utilize electric vehicles. The companies on Tuesday announced plans to deploy 30,000 EV charging ports for business customers by 2030. The “30x30” initiative will connect Ford Pro, a commercial division of the automaker, with Xcel’s electric vehicle supply infrastructure program and will launch next year in Wisconsin and Colorado.
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Industry News
Utility-scale solar in the U.S. “soared” in the third quarter this year, with developers connecting 4.1 GW of capacity to the grid, a 107-percent increase from the same quarter last year, according to a Monday report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. 1.9 GW of solar capacity was added in Q3 2022. The firm said the year-over-year increase is a “sign of resurgence of an industry battered by inflation and supply chain constraints.”
A year after the war in Ukraine drove record-high fossil fuel prices for winter heating in oil-dependent Maine, demand for efficient electric heat pumps remains steady despite new challenges. Spikes in fuel prices don’t tend to immediately translate to increased heat pump demand, officials said, but rather may spark new interest in oil and gas alternatives and other ways to cut back on heating costs.
Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) is working with the Mid-Atlantic Electrification Partnership to secure 100 Lyft rideshare electric vehicles and install 17 high-speed 150 kW direct-current fast chargers in the Baltimore area by the end of this year. Three 150 kW fast chargers, along with two new 7.2 kW dual-port level two chargers, were unveiled during an event this week at Saint Frances Academy in Baltimore.
In 2022, Wayne Szeto was psyched to electrify his home. But his electrical panel presented a potential hurdle: It was only powered with 100 amps of electrical service from the utility — an amount that’s often thought to be too small to fully electrify a home. And Szeto, a 52-year-old Burlingame, California resident, had a lot of gas appliances to switch over: a furnace, water heater, stove and clothes dryer. He also planned to get solar and a battery.
