July 19
TVA Funds Six Pilot Projects
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Connected Communities initiative is funding up to $2 million for six pilot projects that provide STEM education and workforce development training, increase connectedness, lower energy costs, deliver environmental benefits and increase community resiliency, TVA said on July 11. A total of 27 applications were submitted and evaluated by a diverse group of stakeholders.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can be notoriously difficult for electricity providers to engage – they represent a wide variety of business types; they typically do not have staff dedicated to managing their energy usage; and programs haven’t historically been tailored to their needs, which means the customer relationship often hasn’t been developed.
As anyone in the renewable energy space can attest, describing the nuances of distributed energy resources (DERs) or load shifting to a layman is challenging, to say the least. In fact, when I started at Virtual Peaker, I attempted to explain the concept of demand response to my father. His response? It was something like, “I won’t ever let the utility company control my thermostat.”
In a new report on its energy efficiency initiatives, PSEG said more than 380,000 of its New Jersey customers have utilized its suite of energy efficiency programs to save money. PSE&G’s Clean Energy Future Energy Efficiency (CEF-EE) said that participating customers are projected to save a collective $484 million annually on their utility bills through the various program initiatives.
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Industry News
Bennie Tillman Jr. lives in a two-bedroom, one-bath house that his father built in Athens, Georgia back in 1948. By 2022, “it was worn-out,” Tillman told me – drafty on cold winter nights and expensive to keep cool in the Southern summer. That October, contractors breathed new life into the home. They sealed cracks and gaps in the building’s shell that let outdoor air sneak inside, added a moisture barrier to the dirt-floored basement and installed insulation in the attic and basement.
It’s summer in Portland, Oregon and it’s hot – really hot – especially by Pacific Northwest standards. Last week, the season’s first heat wave could have threatened the stability of the Portland General Electric grid had it not been for the largest customer electricity demand shift in the utility’s history. Customer actions reduced electricity demand by nearly 109 MW during peak demand hours on July 8 and 100 MW on July 9, according to PGE.
Utility shut-off rules across the nation that are designed to help Americans stay connected to cooling during periods of extreme temperatures have not kept pace with the realities of climate change, according to an issue brief published July 16 by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate (CEPC).
Hurricane Beryl wrecked Houston’s power grid last week, leaving millions reliant on slow grid repair efforts or limited supplies of diesel generators to keep food and medicine from spoiling and air conditioners running amid deadly heat. But in the sea of toppled power poles and darkened homes and businesses, islands of power and light remained intact.
