January 9
Duke Energy Announces $1 Billion in Cost Savings in Florida
This week's top smart energy news, curated by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC).
Member News
Duke Energy Florida said its targeted infrastructure investments have boosted reliability while reducing customer rates, which drove more than $1 billion in customer savings in 2025. The company said by March 2026, residential customers will see their monthly bill decrease by 22% on average, or about $44 per 1,000 kWh. Investments have included clean energy expansion projects and strengthening the grid against powerful storms.
Residential battery storage paired with demand response programs is emerging as a key strategy for utilities to manage peak demand and maintain reliability during extreme weather events. U.S. residential battery installations surged by more than 130% year-over-year in 2025, adding approximately 608 MW of new capacity in the second quarter alone. Major utilities are expanding these programs to defer costly grid upgrades and strengthen resilience.
When it comes to their expectations for their electricity providers and the management of their household electricity usage, today’s consumers exhibit a wide range of values, behaviors, concerns and interests. With the “Consumer Pulse and Market Segmentation – Wave 9” research, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) divided U.S. consumers over 18 years old who are responsible to paying their electric bills into four attitudinal segments.
ComEd presented a $500,000 electric vehicle (EV) rebate check to BP Pulse for livening 40 new ultrafast EV charging ports near O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. The new charging hub near O’Hare seeks to provide local vehicle operators and rideshare drivers with fast and convenient charging options. It is one of the largest public charging sites in the region and builds on more than 9,500 new public and private charging ports energized through ComEd’s rebates.
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Industry News
A 200-MW data center could offset 10% of its peak load by investing $50 million in low-cost residential efficiency upgrades, energy policy group AnnDyl said in a preliminary analysis earlier this month. The firm modeled the impact of targeted weatherization and smart thermostat deployments in Ohio, a large and growing data center market in the capacity-strained PJM Interconnection grid region.
To say that affordability was a topline issue in 2025 is an understatement. Whether it was record-breaking capacity prices across the country’s largest RTOs, President Trump claiming that affordability “doesn’t mean anything to anybody” or five charts that show why prices are soaring in the country’s largest grid region, the term has become a top-of-mind issue for utilities, regulators and consumers alike.
Residential electric utility customer satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level on record, driven largely by rising electricity costs, according to the J.D. Power “2025 U.S. Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study.” Overall satisfaction declined to 499 on a 1,000-point scale, marking the lowest score recorded across J.D. Power’s residential utility studies. The study points to steadily increasing bills as the primary factor behind the drop.
Rooftop solar and home batteries are way more expensive in the U.S. than in most countries, largely due to slow and burdensome local permitting and utility interconnection processes. But there are tools installers can use to bring down these so-called “soft costs,” which make up about two-thirds of the price of installing solar, batteries and EV chargers in the U.S.
