February 14
ComEd Highlights Efforts to Advance Clean Energy Transition
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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ComEd announced a series of investments and initiatives in 2024, which led to progress made in terms of enhancing reliability, clean energy access, community investment and jobs and overall value for over nine million people served in northern Illinois.
When it comes to decarbonization planning, utilities tend to focus heavily on the supply side. But they may be overlooking one of their most powerful tools for managing a cleaner grid – demand flexibility. Demand response and time-varying rates have been in use for decades. But many utilities still haven’t fully embraced demand flexibility in their planning.
The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) released a new report for utility stakeholders on how AI can be utilized for grid impact analysis of EVs. The report, done in partnership with Bidgely, is called “Insight Brief: AI for Transportation Electrification.” It highlights how AI enables advanced grid impact analysis and facilitates better management of future EV demand.
As the Trump administration attempts to block billions of dollars in federal funds for EV charging, an Illinois utility is moving forward with a massive investment to promote wider EV adoption. At a press conference ahead of the 2025 Chicago Auto Show, ComEd announced $100 million in new rebates designed to boost EV fleet purchases and charging stations across northern Illinois.
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Industry News
Andrew Garberson isn’t worried about his EV handling cold winters. He recently drove his EV to the gym when the temperature where he lives in Des Moines, Iowa was a biting 4 degrees Fahrenheit. A polar vortex had brought a brutal wind, “the kind that whistles in the cracks of the car doors when you drive.”
Florida public power utility OUC is collaborating with Capacitech Energy in a microgrid project to demonstrate Capacitech Energy’s largest deployment to date of the PowerLink, a cable-like and rapid response energy storage system. Also included in the collaboration is Sandia National Laboratories and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity.
The existing grid can handle significant new loads, such as data centers, factories and EVs, as long as they can be curtailed when the electric system is stressed, according to a new report. The largest 22 U.S. balancing authority areas, which account for 95 percent of U.S. load, could accommodate 76 GW to 126 GW of new loads if they could be curtailed for 0.25 to 1 percent of their maximum uptime, respectively.
In a significant step toward renewable energy development in the Appalachian region, a new agreement has been inked for the construction of 14 solar energy projects and three battery storage facilities that will be built via the repurposing of 360 acres of former coal mines across Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.
