February 22
Utilities Missing Opportunities to Tailor Efficiency Pitches
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Utilities could improve participation in energy conservation programs by using survey and smart meter data to tailor messages to individual customers, according to a recent report. SECC this month released its “2019 State of the Consumer” report, which highlights tools and services energy consumers want and how energy providers could provide them.
Questline and DEFG have announced the launch of Pathfinder: Solar IQ, an innovative package of solar research and educational information for energy utilities and their customers. DEFG’s research features four distinct tracks: Customer Insights, Trend Analysis, Case Studies and Best Practices, and Regulatory and Risk. Questline brings the Solar Power Customer Journey to life via engaging, customer-facing educational content. With 75 percent of customers surveyed saying they wish they had more and better information before adding solar, utilities can become an important proactive, trusted resource.
Austin Energy is working with Pecan Street, a research organization, to test the use of electric vehicles as peak shaving tools and, eventually, as a grid resource. The tests, being conducted at Pecan Street’s laboratory in east Austin, involve the use of an electric vehicle capable of bi-directional energy flows, also known as V2G capability.
AEP’s renewable energy subsidiary agreed to acquire Sempra Renewables for approximately $1.056 billion, including 724 MW of operating wind generation and battery assets. Sempra Energy's non-utility operating subsidiary owned all or part of seven wind farms and one battery installation, and three of AEP's operating units currently have power purchase agreements with two of the wind projects.
Ameren Missouri is launching a major, five-year effort to modernize the energy grid and enhance how customers receive electricity. The company’s $5.3 billion Smart Energy Plan includes more than 2,000 electric projects over the next five years, making it the largest infrastructure upgrade plan Ameren Missouri’s history. The $5.3 billion improvement plan includes investments in the electric grid, wind energy, solar power, battery storage to boost reliability, smart grid sensors and equipment to detect and isolate outages and speed up restoration.
For owners of electric vehicles who charge their EVs at home using a ChargePoint Home charger, “Alexa, charge my electric vehicle” has likely become a frequent command they give to the virtual assistant before retiring for the night. Taking advantage of the growth in interconnected devices in homes, EV charging network ChargePoint teamed up with Amazon’s Alexa about a year and a half ago to provide EV owners with a variety of tools that can help them manage their vehicles through Alexa.
APS will install 850 MW of energy storage by the mid-2020s, the utility announced Thursday, including 450 MW / 1500 MWh that will come online by 2021 and an additional 400 MW slated for 2025. By 2021, APS will install 200 MW / 600 MWh of energy storage as retrofits to existing solar facilities, 150 MW / 300 MWh of standalone batteries and a new 100 MW solar facility paired with a 100 MW / 300 MWh battery system.
The world’s largest battery could soon be storing solar energy deep in the heart of Texas oil country. The 495-megawatt storage system would be built in tandem with a solar farm of the same size in Borden County, Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc., which operates most of the state’s grid, posted the details in a chart that shows the state’s battery storage will surge more than sixfold to 584 megawatts when the projects are completed in 2021.