March 12
Salt River Project Helps Develop EV Ready Communities
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Salt River Project recently announced that its ENERGY STAR Homes program now features a new EV Ready option that incentivizes home builders to prewire Phoenix-area home communities for electric vehicle charging needs. About 19 million EVs are predicted to be on U.S. roads by 2030. Starting as early as 2023, several cities across the Valley will begin requiring new homes built have EV wiring installed per proper building codes.
Xcel Energy announced plans to invest $1.7 billion in transmission in order to unlock 5,500 MW of largely new renewables projects in its Colorado footprint. The proposal includes five new segments of high voltage transmission lines to connect more rural, renewables-heavy areas with more urban regions of the state. In total, the proposal would comprise a 560-mile, 345 kV transmission line that will allow the utility to reduce emissions in its Colorado territory by an estimated 85 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
When it comes to the most pressing issues the industry is facing, utilities, regulators and customers generally have the same interests, but often fail to recognize it. Each stakeholder understands there is an urgent need to address decarbonization, affordability, modernization, community growth, equity and resilience. That underlying alignment of values, however, is often lost in discussions over regulatory processes and practice.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) said it is partnering with Origis Energy to develop a 150 MW solar and 50 MW, 250 MWh battery storage facility in Lowndes County, Mississippi, to support two Facebook data centers in the Tennessee Valley. Origis, through a long-term power purchase agreement with TVA that was signed on Facebook’s behalf, will own and operate the facility. The project, which is part of TVA’s Green Invest program, is scheduled to be complete in late 2023.
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The battery storage market for homes and businesses has been steadily growing over the past few years, driven by falling battery prices, demand for reliable backup power and the potential to cut energy expenses. However, the uptake of customer-sited battery storage has not been equally distributed across geographic regions or customer types, with higher-income households driving residential sales and larger energy users with high utility demand charges leading the commercial sector.
Utility websites continue to struggle when it comes to delivering a satisfying digital experience. According to the recently released J.D. Power 2021 Utility Digital Experience Study, utility mobile apps and websites have shown they can deliver on basic tasks as the world transitions to digital-first customer engagement models. But more in-depth functions, such as research on energy-saving information or updating service, continue to present major challenges.
Franklin Energy announced this week that it will deliver up to 10 MW of flexible load management for homes and businesses, plus an online energy products marketplace for Southern California’s Glendale Water & Power. Through the Peak Savings demand response program, Glendale Water & Power will adjust the temperature of participating residential customers’ thermostats on peak days to help reduce demand.
Utilities and their customers are learning how their cooperation can provide mutual benefits by using the flexibility of distributed energy resources (DERs) to cost-effectively balance the dynamics of the new power system. The future is in utilities investing in technologies to manage the growth of customer-owned DERs and customers offering their DERs as grid services, advocates for utilities and DERs told a Jan. 25-28 conference on load flexibility strategies.
