July 31
ComEd Offers Time-of-Day Pricing
This week's top smart energy news, curated by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC).
Member News
ComEd is making another option available to help residential customers control their cost of electricity. The newly launched Time-of-Day (TOD) Pricing offers customers the opportunity to reduce bill costs by shifting energy use to periods when electricity rates are lower and demand is reduced. The free program also provides EV owners with the potential to earn bill credits.
Salt River Project delivered a record amount of energy to customers on Friday, July 24, keeping customers in power on the hottest day of the year so far. Based on preliminary information, SRP delivered an all-time high peak load of 9,072 MW between 5 and 6 p.m. This surpasses the previous record peak of 8,542 MW set on August 7, 2025.
With the rising cost of just about everything continuing to make headlines across the United States, utility affordability has become and remains a top priority for industry leaders. However, keeping bills down isn’t just about rate design or cost cutting, but is directly tied to grid reliability. Consumers expect power to reliably be there every time they flip a switch, just as they expect predictable energy bills, but the frameworks for both are rapidly evolving.
Duke Energy says new data center development across its service territory is expected to generate billions of dollars in long-term bill savings for existing customers while supporting investments in grid infrastructure and new energy resources. The utility said the projected customer benefits will come from long-term agreements with large-load customers that are designed to ensure data centers cover the costs associated with connecting to and being served by the electric system.
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Industry News
Residents in four lower-income Massachusetts neighborhoods now have access to a new, low-cost option for running errands or getting to appointments: a shared, solar-powered electric vehicle. The innovative pilot program, CommunityEV Carshare, launched Monday and offers eligible drivers discounted prices on hourly EV rentals at locations in Boston, Chelsea, Framingham and Quincy.
Last month, protesters angry over high electricity costs disrupted a Las Vegas conference of executives for the nation’s biggest investor-owned utilities – a vivid example of growing public outrage that has forced the industry to again defend their legally guaranteed profit margins. As affordability concerns increase political pressure, several states have taken steps to lower utilities’ return on equity, either through regulatory or legislative action.
BloombergNEF projects that U.S. data centers’ power capacity could reach 194 GW by 2035, an 83% spike compared to a December report. That’s because more projects are entering the pipeline and aim to come online within the next decade. That total would mean that data centers account for about 20% of electricity consumption by the middle of the next decade – up from 5.9% today.
So, how’s that clean energy transition going? It’s the essential inquiry that drives anyone reporting on climate solutions, and it got considerably more difficult to answer after President Trump returned to the White House. He’s done everything in his power (and some things that legally aren’t) to undercut the propulsive growth of renewables, which had accelerated under his predecessor.
