February 28
Alameda Municipal Power Reaches 100 Percent Clean Energy
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
At the beginning of the year, Alameda Municipal Power began providing 100 percent clean energy to all of its customers, making it one of a handful of cities to reach that goal. For decades the California public power utility has had a focus on clean energy, deriving its electrical energy through a mix of geothermal, hydroelectric, wind and landfill gas resources. By 2011, AMP had exceeded California’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requirement, and in 2012, the utility began to strategically sell some of its renewable energy to utilities struggling to meet the RPS mandate.
Duke Energy Florida announced recently that it installed its one-millionth solar panel in the state at its Columbia Solar Power Plant in Fort White, Fla. The 74.9 MW Columbia Solar Power Plant includes approximately 300,000 solar panels and is expected to enter operation in March 2020. “This is an exciting announcement as we increasingly deliver cleaner, more reliable energy to our customers,” Catherine Stempien, Duke Energy Florida State President, said. “By mid-year, our solar plants are expected to eliminate nearly 1.5 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year.”
A decade ago, when SECC was founded, electricity providers typically viewed customers on the other end of the meter simply as “bill payers,” “ratepayers” or even “load.” While the energy industry has made progress in becoming more customer-centric since then, customers’ expectations for their providers remain high, and their needs today are many. In 2019, SECC sought to better understand the expectations and needs of today’s residential energy consumers through four primary research reports.
Massachusetts utilities clearly lead the way on saving energy, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. The ACEEE’s latest Utility Scorecard ranked two of the Bay State’s utilities together at the top of the list. Eversource Energy and National Grid Massachusetts were co-number ones for the second time in the energy efficiency ranking’s four-year history.
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
Oracle’s Paul McDonald, Senior Director of Opower Industry Strategy, recently joined Gregg Knight, National Grid’s Chief Customer Officer, on a panel at SECC's 2020 Consumer Symposium to discuss DER customer needs. We were intrigued by Gregg’s panel comments, and we sat down with him after the event to continue the conversation.
The global energy storage market quadrupled last year to 4 GW of new installations and will surge to a 15-gigawatt annual market in 2024, even as system price declines slow down, according to Wood Mackenzie. The energy storage industry begins the new decade in the midst of a rapid transformation from a niche market to one at the center of the global energy transition.
Ten years ago, SECC was founded to understand the wants/needs of energy consumers in North America and share those learnings with industry stakeholders. The 2020 Consumer Symposium gathered members to reflect on the past decade and look to where consumer needs are heading into the next decade. The one-day symposium was held on January 27, 2020 in San Antonio at DistribuTECH, the utility industry’s leading transmission & distribution conference.
Consumers Energy committed to a net zero carbon emissions goal this week, laying out the next phase of a Clean Energy Plan that promises big changes by 2040. Originally, the Clean Energy Plan — kicked off in 2019 — called for the reduction of carbon emissions by 90 percent within that same timeframe, largely eliminating coal use and working with customers to make energy use more efficient. The new goal expects to achieve 100 percent relief in all electricity generated by or purchased for customers of Consumers.
