July 14
Consumers Energy Focuses on Multifamily EV Charging
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
In Michigan, Consumers Energy this week announced a refocused effort to expand overnight charging for electric vehicles through a deployment push at apartment buildings, condominiums and other community locations, all through its PowerMIDrive program. PowerMIDrive works through $7,500 rebates for EV chargers at apartments and other multifamily locations, where vehicles need to charge overnight.
Distributed intelligence (DI) represents a new smart or active grid that can solve value-based use cases at the grid edge. Through open, secure applications, utilities can use edge-computing capabilities to gather data and insights around grid use and performance. By relying on this DI enterprise application platform, utilities can obtain detailed data and a full picture of the grid in real time, maximizing the value of their AMI investments and looking towards next-generation capabilities.
Summer’s here, and demand challenges are back on every energy provider’s mind. People typically use the most electricity this time of year. In fact, on some state’s hottest days, air conditioning can account for more than 70 percent of peak residential demand. Utilities prepare for this challenge every summer, but risks of supply shortages during extreme heat events are becoming more common in nearly every region of the country due to climate change.
ComEd released updated solar calculators online for rooftop and community solar projects, granting customers more insight into the costs, benefits and savings associated. Between 2016 and May 2023, installations of solar systems by residential and business customers of ComEd reportedly grew from 837 to 41,270. More than 82 community solar projects sprawl across northern Illinois now, and the company predicted that more than 100 will expand that reach to more than 25,000 people by year’s end.
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Industry News
Wood Mackenzie estimates that the number of electric vehicle charging ports in the U.S. will reach close to 18 million by 2027, with most chargers in the residential category. However, the residential market share will slightly decline in that period as the public and commercial EV charging segments grow, according to Wood Mackenzie.
Heat pumps are often touted as an efficient way to decarbonize home heating. But a new approach to driving their adoption is on the rise in the U.S. Over the past few months, federal energy-efficiency regulators and state and city building-code overseers have begun to promote policies aimed at encouraging people to replace their existing central air-conditioning systems with heat pumps.
Toyota announced a “technical breakthrough” for solid-state electric vehicle batteries that will reduce size, weight and costs by half while delivering ranges up to 745 miles, according to the Financial Times. A Toyota executive said the company addressed the durability concerns that plagued its solid-state EV batteries a few years ago.
California is offering $150 million to help California public school districts and charter schools put more electric and zero-emission school buses on the roads. A collaboration between the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission, the state is accepting applications through September 29, 2023, and award recipients can receive up to $495,000.
