January 14
SRP to Add 100-MW Battery Storage to Solar Plant
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Arizona public power utility Salt River Project (SRP) has signed a contract with a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources to add a 100-megawatt (MW) battery storage system to the existing 100-MW solar plant, Saint Solar, located in Coolidge, Arizona, which is currently serving SRP customers. The 100-MW battery, expected to be operational in June 2023, will provide four hours of storage.
The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC), a nonprofit organization researching and educating energy consumers in the U.S. and Canada, said that six utility industry executives have been named to the organization’s Board of Directors. The group’s governing board is made up of 15 members who represent utilities, consumer advocacy organizations, technology companies and other industry stakeholders, along with SECC’s president and legal counsel.
Landlords have a big role in energy management and can either ignore it altogether or make upgrades that will reduce both energy usage and tenant energy bills. The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative recently interviewed landlords. Not only do energy upgrades make landlords feel better, but they also can help them compete for new tenants in a market full of newer, better insulated buildings.
A team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) published findings last week on the potential value of electric vehicle managed charging, offering a complete review of how EVs and the grid could unite values to benefit the intertwining electric and transportation sectors. The study broke the matter into three parts: the managed charging landscape, the costs and benefits of managed charging, and the future research and developments needed to make this all a reality.
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Industry News
A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that 46.1 gigawatts (GW) of new utility-scale electric generating capacity will be added to the U.S. power grid in 2022. Of that amount, approximately half of the planned capacity additions will be solar energy, with roughly 21 percent coming from natural gas and 17 percent from wind.
The COVID-19 pandemic and changing climate conditions are keeping people home for longer periods and leading to spikes in energy use in what smart home tech company Sense calls the “new not-normal.” The company released an analysis of 2021 home electricity usage based on an analysis of anonymized energy data in more than 10,000 homes equipped with its home energy monitors.
Consumers Energy of Michigan committed $4.5 million in assistance for low-income households last week and, in the case of $1 million of these funds, to help two nonprofits keep vulnerable homes heated. The $1 million will be distributed equally between the United Way of Jackson County and TrueNorth Community Services, with which Consumers has worked in the past. The remaining $3.5 million will be put into a new pilot program scheduled to start later this year.
Arcadia, one of the largest managers of community solar assets in the country, now also offers software that could give energy consumers and third parties better access to utility data. Providing consumers with more granular information about their energy use could spur innovation and speed up decarbonization by eliminating the utility middleman.
