July 21
APS Sees New Record Demand During Heatwave
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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For 17 days running, Arizona was battered by temperatures at or exceeding 110 degrees, and as a result, Arizona Public Service (APS) announced that electricity demand reached 8,191 MW on Saturday, July 15 – setting a new peak for the second time in two days. Before that Friday, the previous energy demand record for APS was set in 2020, at 7,660 MW.
In the rapidly growing Phoenix metropolitan area where hot summer temperatures, intense monsoon storms, population growth and regional resource adequacy challenges continue to stress the energy grid, Salt River Project (SRP) remains committed to providing reliable power to around 1.1 million customers. Peak electricity demand in the SRP’s service territory is forecasted to grow by approximately 900 MW by 2025, which represents a 12-percent increase from today.
Demand response (DR) helps reduce grid peaks during times of excess demand, and a community choice aggregator that serves Sonoma and Mendocina counties has a DR new offering for its residential customers. Sonoma Clean Power recently launched what it calls GridSavvy Rewards, a program aimed at reducing strain on the state’s electric grid and encouraging mindful energy habits at home.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE) recently signed a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Invenergy, a developer, owner and operator of sustainable energy facilities. The 15-year agreement with Invenergy’s Vantage Wind Energy Center in Ellensburg, Washington permits PSE to acquire 90 MW of clean energy per year, beginning in 2025. That will be enough energy to power just over 26,000 homes.
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Industry News
A new report from the Critical Consumer Issues Forum (CCIF) explored the most pressing challenges in the electric sector and how to handle them. The report, titled Navigating the Challenges & Opportunities of Today’s Regulatory Landscape, was presented at an event collocated with the NARUC 2023 Summer Policy Summit and the 2023 NASUCA Mid-Year Meeting in Austin, Texas.
DTE Energy, one of Michigan’s largest utilities, pledged to build far more renewable energy as part of a long-term plan finalized last Wednesday. The 20-year plan would spend $11 billion on clean energy construction in Michigan and hasten the closure of DTE’s remaining coal plants. Notably, the utility proposal won support from a cohort of 21 different community groups spanning the environmental, labor, energy and business domains.
Lawmakers in Oregon late last month passed legislation that adopts a goal for the state to have at least 500,000 new heat pumps in its residential and commercial buildings by 2030. The challenge, said Joel Iboa, Executive Director of the Oregon Just Transition Alliance, is who is going to do the work of installing these heat pumps.
The latest triennial energy efficiency plan filed by New Hampshire’s utility companies could save consumers $675 million, prevent two million tons of greenhouse gases from going into the atmosphere and support 1,718 full-time jobs. But how much does the average Granite State consumer know about any of that, if at all?
