Southern California Edison (SCE) announced on Tuesday a program that will allow up to 300 customers to create a distributed solar-plus-storage network through Sunrun’s Brightbox home energy system that the utility can call on over the next year during peak demand times. The virtual power plant has an undisclosed potential capacity and is an SCE pilot program, after which similar offerings could be made with other solar and storage providers, Jessica Lim, SCE’s Principal Manager of Product Management, said.

Reckoning with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia Power has offered customers with past-due account balances the option of a special payment plan, granting them the ability to pay the company back over six months and avoid late fees. Additionally, Georgia Power has offered PrePay-enrolled customers the option to make payments for current energy usage and have a 25 percent portion of their payments put toward any outstanding balance, with late fees waived if the total is paid before April 2021.

Electric vehicles present a substantial opportunity for utilities to provide new services to their customers and support climate goals. As a result, utilities are actively looking for ways to encourage customers to adopt EVs. So how do you design a program that will attract customers and deliver the services they need? DNV GL recently investigated what drives customers in the state of New York when it comes to EV adoption – and some of the results were surprising.

Coal production is anticipated to fall 25 percent in 2020 due to slowed industrial production under the current economic recession, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s short-term outlook released last Tuesday. Meanwhile, the U.S. solar market hit a record in Q1 of this year, installing 3.6 GW, according to a recent report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie.

The U.S. has made significant progress decarbonizing the electricity sector in recent years, and as the grid continues to get cleaner, cities and states are turning their attention to other sectors, such as direct fossil fuel use in buildings. The use of gas or fuel oil for heating, hot water and cooking accounts for more than 10 percent of U.S. carbon emissions. All-electric building policies, which promote the use of electric appliances instead of fossil fuels, have gained traction from California to Massachusetts, and policymakers everywhere are paying attention.

Economic restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic are easing in some parts of the country as temperatures have begun to warm. As a result, grid operators are now seeing electricity demand rise after a significant drop this spring, leading to concerns about their ability to keep the lights on – and how outages could impact vulnerable populations.