May 23
Duquesne Light Details Progress in Corporate Responsibility Report
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Duquesne Light Co. (DLC) released data Tuesday in its 2024 Corporate Responsibility Report showing progress made on the company’s three environmental, social and governance (ESG) pillars: climate conscious, powering people and responsible performance. DLC, which serves more than 615,000 customers in two Pennsylvania counties, including the city of Pittsburgh, reported that last year it invested an additional $466.7 million in infrastructure.
ICF released a new report that reveals how electricity demand and usage will grow over the next 25 years, where it will grow, and the potential impacts on the reliability and affordability of electricity in the United States. Key findings of the report include U.S. electricity demand is expected to grow 25 percent by 2030 and 78 percent by 2050. And U.S. peak electricity demand is expected to grow 14 percent by 2030 and 54 percent through 2050.
Oncor is working on implementing its System Resiliency Plan (SRP) to reduce the impact and duration of severe weather outages and mitigate other risks to electric grid. The SRP, approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) in November 2024, is the company’s plan to invest approximately $3 billion in the resiliency of its distribution system within the next four years.
Every year, our partners at the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) conduct the annual “State of the Consumer” survey, which examines the relationship between consumers and their electric utility providers. As with the last several years, demand is on the rise, currently driven by the development of energy-hungry AI and data centers, supply chain issues and increasing extreme weather events, to name a few.
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Industry News
According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), residential electric utility expenditures to cool homes are expected to reach record levels this summer. In its annual Summer Residential Cooling Outlook, NEADA and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate found that consumers could be hit with record high prices for home cooling this year as the average cost of electricity is projected to reach $784, up 6.2 percent from last year’s $737.
City Utilities of Springfield has launched CU Peak Rewards, a new voluntary program designed to reduce electric usage during peak times, such as periods of extreme weather. The program aims to delay the need to generate additional electricity to meet high demands – helping keep service reliable and affordable for our community. During this time, City Utilities will make minor adjustments to enrolled smart thermostats for a short period of time to help reduce overall electric usage across the system.
All regions of the North American electric grid are expected to have sufficient resources under normal operating and weather conditions this summer, but some may face supply shortfall risks during periods of extreme heat, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said in its annual 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment. Peak demand across NERC’s 23 assessment areas is forecast to increase by 10 GW since summer 2024, “more than double the increase from 2023 to 2024,” NERC said.
When Mason Taylor was getting ready to graduate from high school in 2022, he thought he would have to take an entry-level technician job with a company in Tennessee. Taylor grew up in the town of Dryden in rural Lee County, in the westernmost sliver of Virginia between Kentucky and Tennessee. He had come to love the electrical courses he took in high school because there was always something new to learn, always a new way to challenge himself.
