January 22
Duke Energy Sees Growth in Solar Installations
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Duke Energy in North Carolina installed some 5,500 private solar systems at their homes and businesses in 2020. Duke Energy connected almost 350 MW of solar power capacity in 2020, which could power roughly 60,000 homes. The increase is driven primarily by the company’s five-year, $62 million solar rebate program, which helps pay for the significant upfront costs of solar systems.
A new online marketplace for community solar is aiming to connect project developers and potential subscribers in nine states, bringing down costs and helping to accelerate community solar development. Massachusetts-based EnergySage announced a soft launch of the portal earlier this month. The company previously developed an online marketplace to help customers request and compare quotes from rooftop solar installers.
SECC released a new series of fact sheets to help consumers understand the many benefits of the smart grid and the ways that they can engage in programs, services and electric rate plans that are enabled through smart grid technologies. Over the last decade, the smart grid has helped create a new landscape for consumer engagement in energy. SECC’s Smart Grid 2.0 fact sheets focus on three key areas of this energy transformation and explain in clear language what they mean for the average American consumer.
With the closure of a deal on the 300 MW Atchison Renewable Energy Center in northwest Missouri, Ameren Missouri could add as much as 700 MW of in-state wind generation to the grid this year. While the Atchison purchase isn’t operating at full capacity yet, due to ongoing construction on some of its turbines, approximately 100 MW are now in service.
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Industry News
Affordable housing and clean energy will intersect at a first-of-its-kind “renter equity” development planned for Detroit. Hope Village Revitalization, a local community development corporation serving the area in and around Highland Park, is aiming to insulate residents from gentrification by offering subsidized rents and a program in which renters accumulate equity by working around the building. The project will also include a community solar component designed to lessen renters’ utility burden.
The United States is already running at the head of the pack in the race to cut greenhouse gas emissions as it rejoins the Paris Agreement, leaders of the energy industry said this week. The industry was largely supportive of President Joe Biden’s statement move on his first day in office, which would revive its commitment to cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.
The COVID-19 health crisis will ease gradually during the course of this year and most economies and the energy sector will stage recoveries. Ironically, 2021 might also be less uniformly bright for clean energy than its lugubrious predecessor turned out to be, according to BNEF. The U.S. will re-enter the arena on climate leadership, probably with a 2050 zero-carbon pledge that will mean that the vast majority of the world’s economy will be in countries with zero-carbon commitments.
In May, when the pandemic was solidly in what would be its first peak in cities around the United States, office electricity consumption dropped by nearly 25 percent – a predictable dip as many companies closed their doors and turned off the lights. Energy-sucking office equipment and lighting systems were switched either off or to standby mode as workers left the buildings, and office electricity use came down to record lows.
