January 28
Duke Energy Florida Launches Bring Your Own Battery Study
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Duke Energy Florida launched a new study to learn more about customer use of battery technology and explore opportunities to leverage existing battery energy storage systems. The Bring Your Own Battery (BYOB) study involves Duke Energy Florida customers who currently have batteries installed in their homes to provide backup power in case of an outage.
Forty-one percent of owners of gas-powered vehicles said they are very or somewhat likely to consider an all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle the next time they purchase a car, according to a report released this week by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC).
Officials from California's Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) on Jan. 24 were joined by regional leaders for a ribbon-cutting of SMUD’s first utility-scale storage battery project. With the ribbon cutting, the public power utility unveiled six large-scale lithium-ion battery storage units at the Hedge Solar Farm in south Sacramento, a pilot project that will demonstrate the feasibility of utility-scale battery storage.
Itron has announced that NET2GRID’s customer engagement and customer intelligence solution is now part of its ecosystem of distributed intelligence applications. NET2GRID offers artificial intelligence and machine-learning services in energy insights based on disaggregation of energy consumption from smart meter data.
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Industry News
New and refurbished commercial and multi-unit buildings in Washington, D.C., that have at least three off-road parking spaces will be required to make at least 20 percent of those spaces available to accommodate EV charging infrastructure, under a new law that took effect this year. The new requirement came in response to public concern that families in apartment buildings or without garages did not have access to EV chargers, a barrier to purchasing a car.
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) proposed building nine new battery energy storage projects totaling around 1,600 MW of power capacity. If approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the nine projects (details below) would bring PG&E’s total battery energy storage system capacity to more than 3.3 GW by 2024.
Children in seven environmental justice communities in Connecticut will soon be breathing fewer diesel fumes thanks to the latest round of state grants from the Volkswagen settlement funds. The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced last month that the third round of Volkswagen funds will provide more than $9.5 million to help replace old diesel buses with 43 new electric school buses.
The U.S. is preparing to spend up to $7.5 billion in federal infrastructure funds to build out a nationwide EV charging network. Now federal and state agencies and community and private-sector partners need to figure out how to spend that money fast – and spend it wisely. A National EV Charging Summit last week highlighted how the federal government intends to manage this historic investment.
