After years of bargaining, PG&E officially launched its EV Charge Network pilot program. It’s the largest utility-sponsored EV charging program in the country. The results could offer lessons on the best path forward for other states that hope to implement EV adoption at the scale of the country’s largest market.

Consumer engagement and energy management platforms dominated demand response trends in 2017, and will continue to do so in 2018. Aggregating distributed energy resources has also been a long-term goal for utilities and developers, and this is the year where it could take off. Harnessing data from consumers and digitizing operations is emerging as a key trend for utilities as well.

Bidgely has raised a $27 million Series C round to help it serve more than 10 million homes with a blend of efficiency reports, energy usage alerts, and home energy audits. Tuesday’s round is the largest yet for the Mountain View, California-based startup, and was led by Georgian Partners, along with previous investors Innogy, E.ON and Khosla Ventures.

Large renewables projects – largely wind and solar – accounted for half of the power capacity additions of utilities last year, says the federal government. Of the 25,000 megawatts of utility-scale generating capacity erected last year – half was renewable, according to a new report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Energy storage will reap the benefits of a foundation laid in 2017 — when regulated utilities took the helm of massive storage projects. The resource's market growth is expected to continue well into this year, analysts say, as states begin compelling utilities to include it in their long-term planning processes.

An initial analysis of a study being conducted by SRP and EPRI has found that time-of-use price plans have been effective at incentivizing electric vehicle owners to charge later than they normally would. SRP said recently it is one of the first utilities to study the charging habits of EV drivers. The utility wants to know how the increase in energy consumption from EVs will affect the grid.