January 20
What Do Consumers Think About Their Electric Bills?
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
For many consumers, the monthly electric bill is the primary – or only – routine touchpoint with their electricity providers. Given this significant role in the utility-customer relationship, how do residential customers truly feel about their bills and how do these perceptions impact what they think about their electricity providers?
Virtual Peaker, a cloud-based SaaS company empowering modern utilities with the friendliest distributed energy platform on the planet, and Emporia, an energy management technology company with a goal of making energy efficiency accessible to all homeowners by creating energy-saving technology at the lowest cost and highest quality possible, have integrated their technologies to connect via the internet any Emporia electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) to Virtual Peaker’s DERMS suite, Shift.
Five years ago, California community energy provider Peninsula Clean Energy decided that buying enough clean energy to match its average annual electricity demand wasn’t enough. Instead, it wanted to deliver clean energy to its customers during every hour of every day — what it calls “24/7 carbon-free energy.” And last week, Peninsula explained how it plans to get there.
Illinois regulators on Tuesday received multi-year plans for rates and continued grid investments from ComEd, the Chicago-based energy company owned by the publicly traded Exelon Corp. Together, ComEd says the proposals will ramp up its efforts to meet state-mandated clean energy and decarbonization goals as it works to meet higher electricity demands.
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Industry News
On Wednesday, a national coalition of companies and nonprofit groups announced a big vision for community solar in the U.S. – 30 GW by 2030. That’s nearly six times the 5.3 GW installed now. The Coalition for Community Solar Access, which counts companies Arcadia and Con Edison and nonprofits Groundswell and Grid Alternatives among its members, made the announcement at the Community Solar Power Summit in San Diego.
Entergy Texas announced it has launched its Green Select Program, an opt-in program allowing residential and business customers to match some or all of their electricity usage with renewable energy. The no-commitment plan allows customers to enroll 25 percent, 50 percent or 100 percent of their monthly electric usage through renewable energy certificates (RECs).
The California Public Utilities Commission last Thursday approved three energy project contracts proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric, as well as four contracts proposed by Southern California Edison, that will collectively provide more than 800 MW of new solar and storage capacity to help ensure the reliability of the state’s electric grid this decade.
Kenneth McKinney took notice of the south-facing back roof before buying his Granby, Connecticut, home about two years ago. That roof, he thought, is ideal for solar panels. So, after he and his wife, Maribeth, moved into the new home in the Copper Brook Circle planned community, ideally located close to their son and his family, McKinney began researching solar installers.
