February 18
ComEd Investments Stave Off Over 17 Million Outages
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
According to its latest assessment, ComEd’s power grid investments yielded some of its best year-over-year reliability yet in 2021, thanks to a mix of smart switches, cable replacements, storm hardening and vegetation management efforts that improved the grid in the face of severe weather. Grid improvements first began in 2011, and since then, have yielded 68 percent reliability improvements that helped it avoid more than 17 million outages.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers will contribute their expertise in electrified transportation systems to help create a new federal office focused on strategically and equitably expanding EV charging infrastructure throughout the United States. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation is an interagency collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
EnergySage, a scrappy startup with a platform that lets customers comparison shop for rooftop solar, just got acquired by Schneider Electric, the vast France-based energy hardware and services firm. Schneider sells industrial automation tools and large-scale microgrids-as-a-service, but it also makes the circuit breakers and electrical panels that form the heart of a home’s electricity system.
John D. McDonald, smart grid business development leader at GE’s Grid Solutions with over 47 years of experience in the electric utility transmission and distribution industry, has been elected as a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineers (NAE). The election as a member of the NAE is one of the most prolific professional honors an engineer can receive.
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
Something unusual is happening in Hawaii: An electric utility and rooftop solar installers have agreed on a proposal to reward households for sharing clean energy with the grid at useful times. In many places around the U.S., utilities treat rooftop solar as an obstacle. They say it shifts grid-maintenance costs from customers who have solar to those who don’t or causes headaches for their system planning and operations.
Two independent analyses completed this month have determined that the U.S. is now on track to deploy at least 30 GW of offshore wind generation by 2030, meeting a key goal established by the Biden administration. New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have pledged to procure more than 45 GW of offshore wind by 2040, and 17.5 GW of wind projects have already secured financing and offtake pathways.
Despite an installation pace that fell three percent last year, the United States has officially crossed a 200 GW milestone for clean energy capacity deployment, according to the latest report from the American Clean Power Association (ACP). In its Clean Power Quarterly 2021 Q4 Market Report, the association noted that 1,000 projects remain in development and hailed the 27.7 GW installed last year.
What will it take to switch every home in America from fossil-fueled heating and cooking to electric heating and cooking? Think tanks and government agencies tend to consider market incentives and efficiency mandates when trying to answer this question. Startups such as Sealed and BlocPower are raising millions of dollars of venture capital to support new electrification business models and financing structures.
