June 2
SECC Survey Provides Insight to Customer Engagement Behaviors
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
SECC has released an update to its flagship “Consumer Pulse” survey. The SECC survey revealed insights on what smart grid benefits are the most important to consumers; how willing consumers are to pay for benefits associated with the smart grid; what utility programs are garnering the most consumer interest; and what Millennials think about home energy usage and the smart grid.
Itron completed its previously announced purchase of privately-held demand response firm Comverge by purchasing its parent company, Peak Holding Corp., for about $100 million. With the acquisition, Itron strengthens its portfolio of grid solutions with Comverge's demand response offering while also paving the way for distributed energy management applications using Itron’s OpenWay Riva IoT solution.
Electric customers are hungry for new services and a new relationship with their energy providers, two studies released recently say. Close to three-quarters of Americans would like an energy storage system for their home and half want rooftop solar, shared solar and programmable thermostats, according to the SGCC study.
Younicos has signed an agreement with Austin Energy for a 1.75 MW, 3.2 MWh energy storage system. The storage system will be part of a DERMS that aims to maintain grid reliability while allowing high levels of distributed solar PV penetration. The project is part of the DOE’s SHINES program.
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
Solar has been on an amazing growth trajectory. As we approach the milestone of two million homes with solar power, we need something more beautiful to reach the mass market. Enter the Tesla solar roof. Tesla’s solar roof has redefined the popular conception of what residential solar can be.
Pointing out the chronic underprediction of clean energy growth rates has become something of a sport in analyst circles. The IEA and EIA take most of the heat from critics. Throughout the last decade, the two influential organizations have faced growing criticism for their conservative projections on wind and solar growth. Skip Laitner, a renowned energy-efficiency expert, is the latest to weigh in. Turns out, efficiency is also wildly underestimated.
Burlington Electric recently announced it will offer customers a $1,200 rebate on the purchase of a mid-priced or economy electric vehicle. The program will help the city meet its goal of reaching energy neutrality, while also helping the state meet its renewable energy standard. Burlington's offer is one of several high-dollar rebates utilities have recently advertised to incentivize electric vehicle adoption. Two utilities in Hawaii and one in Kansas offered rebates up to $10,000.
Utilities addressing the wide-ranging benefits and operational impacts of increased utilization of electric vehicles on the grid will find two recently released studies by SEPA of particular benefit. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, EV-related electricity consumption is projected to increase in the U.S. from the current 1 TWh — consumed annually by the 580,000 EVs sold in the U.S. as of February 2017 — to a whopping 33 TWh annually by 2025.
