January 21
Colorado Utility Selects Landis+Gyr for AMI
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Longmont Power and Communications has partnered with Landis+Gyr to modernize its electric meters with AMI. The project will start with the deployment of 500 meters this year, with up to 46,000 Revelo units targeted for installation by the end of 2023. The adoption of Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream Connect IoT platform for connectivity and the smart meters falls under efforts by the utility to modernize the city’s grid for energy system efficiency.
National Grid has reached a milestone in connecting more than three gigawatts of renewable distributed generation across its network. With 3 GW total of renewable distributed generation now connected to its network, enough to power about 600,000 homes, National Grid is the number-two utility in the nation for non-residential solar installations and number seven for residential solar installations.
When many people think of renters, they likely think first of residential customers. However, there are a large group of commercial renters that utilities have to serve. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who rent can be one of the most challenging segments to reach and engage. The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) recently interviewed SMB renters to better understand their values, motivations and barriers around energy management.
In his state of the industry address, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) CEO Arshad Mansoor spoke of the greater need for collaborative research and investment to bring new clean energy technologies from lab to market. He also addressed the important role that the sector will play in reducing carbon emissions through electrification across the economy – from transportation to buildings and industry.
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
New regulations and legislation in 2022 will continue seeking rate designs with price signals that shift customer electricity usage to more effectively benefit both customers and the power system, utility and other analysts said. The growing roles of variable generation in the power supply and distributed energy resources (DERs) in meeting demand make effective price signals to customers critical, the analysts agreed.
In a bold move that recognizes how electrification of transportation will help fight climate change, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced the creation of a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to support the deployment of $7.5 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build out a national EV charging network.
According to the latest Short-Term Energy Outlook from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), rising electricity generation from renewable energy resources such as solar and wind will reduce generation from fossil fuel-fired power plants over the next two years. Renewable shares of generation are expected to reach 17 percent in 2023.
Multifamily housing has lagged far behind single-family homes in adopting solar panels and batteries. But Michael Huerta, CEO of PearlX, believes his company has found a way to crack the market, starting in Texas. Project TexFlex – the new program PearlX launched last week in partnership with SolarEdge, a vendor of solar power electronics, batteries and inverters – will start with a single apartment building in Houston.
