June 1
PSEG Announces Five-Year Infrastructure Plan
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
PSEG announced plans recently to invest up to $17 billion on energy infrastructure in New Jersey over the next five years, including investments in energy efficiency and electric vehicle infrastructure. The diversified energy company’s plans call for investing $6 billion in transmission projects, $3 billion in natural gas distribution reliability and safety, $2.5 billion in hardening of electric and gas facilities, $2.5 billion in energy efficiency, $300 million in smart EV infrastructure and $100 million in utility-scale energy storage.
SECC issued a new report highlighting the energy efficiency services that small businesses want from electric utilities. The report, “Understanding Your SMB Customers: A Segmentation Approach”, shows opportunities for utilities to engage small and medium-sized businesses in energy efficiency programs.
The Texas Public Utilities Commission voted recently to approve two wind farm projects from Xcel Energy's Southwestern Public Service — a 478 MW project in Hale County, Texas and a 522 MW wind project in Roosevelt County, New Mexico. The Commission also approved the power purchase agreement between the utility and NextEra's Bonita Wind Energy, as part of Xcel's acquisition of the Hale project.
Small and medium businesses are often under-served energy customers – their sheer volume, varying energy profiles and diverse motivations make them a challenging segment to engage. But, this segment can represent up to 75 percent of a utility’s business customer base. The good news is that a new report, “Understanding Your SMB Customers”, unveils a multitude of opportunities for electricity providers to engage this key customer group.
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Industry News
Electric vehicles could become a vital asset for California grid operators who are struggling to bring more renewables online. The state’s rapid adoption of solar power is contributing to a problem known as the “duck curve” — a deep dip in demand during solar-saturated midday hours, followed by a steep ramp in the evening as solar power fades away.
In the past few years, utilities have taken a growing interest in customer experience. As leading digital natives increasingly shape customer expectations, utilities are facing growing pressure to create compelling customer experiences in their own industry. With the decline in costs of solar, storage, and other distributed-generation technologies, they fear losing customers, or part of their usage, to companies like Tesla Energy.
Teslas and Nissan Leafs are likely to become a much more common sight on the world’s roads in the next two years, the International Energy Agency says. The global fleet of electric vehicles is likely to more than triple to 13 million by the end of the decade from 3.7 million last year, according to a report released recently, which was set up to advise industrial nations on energy policy.
NV Energy announced recently it has contracted for more than 1 gigawatt of new solar energy and 100 megawatts of battery energy capacity, in a resource plan that’s still subject to regulatory approval and hinges on the outcome of a high-profile ballot measure. The utility signed power purchase agreements for six new solar energy projects and three related battery storage projects, selected through a competitive solicitation initiated in January of this year.
