March 15
ComEd Proposes Low-Income Discount Program
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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ComEd recently proposed a new Low-Income Discount (LID) program to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) that would, if approved, aid households at up to 300 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Aiming for deployment in 2025, the company described the program as something of a sliding scale. Those with household income less than or equal to 50 percent of the FPL would gain the greatest discounts, although some form of discount would be granted up to the 300-percent mark.
Nationwide, the number of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations grew by 7.7 percent in the third quarter to 12,986 ports, bringing the total number of EV charging ports to 181,026, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL’s new report uses data from the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator to provide a snapshot of the state of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the U.S. by charging level, network and location.
The accelerating growth of distributed energy resource (DER) adoption is both exciting, but also creating new challenges for the electric grid. Time-varying rates (TVRs) have proven themselves as a cost-effective tool for utilities to unlock demand flexibility at scale to meet decarbonization goals – all while mobilizing customers in the clean energy transition.
PSEG Long Island announced last Thursday that it will partner with Bidgely in order to expand its energy efficiency solutions. The company said in a press release that its expended partnership with Bidgely will provide an end-to-end energy efficiency solution that aligns with regulatory priorities while promoting energy savings and customer engagement.
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Industry News
You might consider heat pumps to be a tantalizing climate solution (they are) and one you could adopt yourself (plenty have). But perhaps you’ve held off on getting one, wondering how much of a difference they really make if a dirty grid is supplying the electricity you’re using to power them – that is, a grid whose electricity is generated at least in part by fossil gas, coal or oil.
Software company EnergyHub and Toyota Motor North America are collaborating on a program to shift EV charging load away from times of peak electricity demand. Aiming to help keep the power grid reliable, the partnership includes direct integration with EnergyHub’s platform to enable Toyota and Lexus drivers to take advantage of utility programs.
Energy storage installations boomed last year, almost doubling cumulative capacity to around 16 GW from 8 GW in 2022 and bringing total hybrid project capacity online now to over 30.7 GW, said the American Clean Power Association in its 2023 annual market report. Solar-plus-storage made up 95 percent of the 11 GW of new hybrid capacity brought online last year, and total hybrid installations rose 90 percent from 2022 to 2023, “setting a new record in the hybrid space,” said ACP’s report.
America’s demand for electricity is growing for the first time in decades. Sprawling data centers are cropping up across the country to enable our hyperconnected digital lives and support emerging AI systems. The rise of electric vehicles and the switch to electric heat pumps and appliances are further fueling the nation’s need for electricity. Analysts say these trends will cause U.S. power demand to spike in the coming years.
