February 17
Three Little Questions
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
SECC provides some of the most comprehensive and up-to-date research on the consumer’s journey in engaging the features, technologies, and programs enabled by the smart grid. ISEIF asked Patty Durand, President and CEO of SECC, three little questions about how customers are engaging with smart grid technology and trends that are shaping the customer experience.
The ICC has given the green light to a proposal by ComEd that allows companies and researchers access to anonymous energy usage data in order to enable the development of new products and services that will add value to Illinois energy consumers. The program has the potential to spur new offerings from smart home and appliance manufacturers, HVAC and lighting companies, market researchers and energy management specialists.
AEP Ohio plans to begin installing 894,000 smart meters in four to six months in its central and southern Ohio service territory as part of a $516 million gridSmart Phase 2 plan recently approved by the Ohio Public Utilities Commission. Tt will take four years to install the meters in 31 communities served by the AEP subsidiary.
DNV GL's second Trade Ally Pulse Survey, which measures the challenges and opportunities these key utility partners face in the marketplace, found that a reduction in operating and maintenance costs was the most effective means to sell energy efficiency, according to the contractors that work with utilities in demand-side management programs.
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Industry News
In its biggest year to date, the United States solar market nearly doubled its annual record, topping out at 14,625 megawatts of solar PV installed in 2016. This represents a 95% increase over the previous record of 7,493 megawatts installed in 2015.
About three-quarters of public power utilities offer energy efficiency or demand-side management programs to their customers, according to the APPA report Energy Efficiency, Demand-Side Management and Conservation Programs at Public Power Utilities. The survey was based on 96 responses from public power utilities in 33 states.
When you turn on a light or charge your phone, the electricity coming from the outlet may well have traveled hundreds of miles across the power grid that blankets most of North America — the world’s largest machine, and one of its most eccentric. Your household power may have been generated by Niagara Falls, or by a natural-gas-fired plant on a barge floating off the Brooklyn shore. But the kilowatt-hour produced down the block probably costs more than the one produced at the Canadian border.
"Recently Consumers Energy installed a smart meter on my home, and I've been learning firsthand about how it gives me more information about - and greater control of - my home energy use," Kirk Heinze says on Greening of the Great Lakes. Consumers Energy has currently have installed over 1.4 million electric meters and 400,000 gas communication modules for customers who get both their energy and gas from the company.
