May 6
Uplight, GridX Partner to Simplify Clean Energy Decision-Making
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Uplight and GridX announced a partnership this week that will enable utilities to help energy customers better understand the bill impacts of their energy decisions and actions. Time-of-use and other complex rate plans are increasingly critical to managing the grid, achieving decarbonization goals and integrating DERs like solar, storage and EVs. However, there is a customer engagement barrier to widescale rates adoption.
The past several years have been full of changes and challenges for American consumers. Within the energy sector, we’ve seen decarbonization commitments from electricity providers, the proliferation of smart home devices and the beginning of a new era of electrification (both inside the home and on the roads), to name just a few major trends. And in society at large, social justice movements have put an increased spotlight on diversity and inclusion.
With the coal-fired Coronado Generating Station (CGS) scheduled to close no later than 2032, Arizona’s Salt River Project (SRP) is launching several studies, and working with the local St. Johns community, to investigate possible low- or no-carbon reuses of the plant site. CGS has a capacity of 773 MW from one 389 MW-unit and one 384 MW-unit. SRP’s Coal Communities Transition Team has already begun work on a community engagement plan in coordination with the CGS community.
ComEd this week announced the official launch of a joint initiative with the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus to help northern Illinois communities meet the expected demand for EVs and EV charging infrastructure. The utility and the caucus on May 3 unveiled a local government EV Readiness Program with a ComEd investment of $225,000 that will support program development, consulting and personnel costs to educate municipalities across the ComEd service region over the next two years.
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Industry News
Versant Power, Maine’s second-largest electric utility, is replacing more than 100,000 electric meters for homes and small- to medium-sized businesses. The current meters are at the end of their service life, so Versant is using the opportunity to upgrade the tech to give customers real-time data about electric usage and to help the company identify power outages.
The growing number of large solar and wind energy projects resulted in renewable generation beating out nuclear energy last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday. The nation has seen a steady rise in renewable generation, with the biggest share from solar, which is expected to continue because of the lower cost and greater safety of this intermittent power resource, clean energy advocates say.
Dozens of all-electric buildings are sprouting up across Washington state as more developers ditch gas-fired systems in a bid to curb pollution. A diverse array of facilities now use electric heat pumps to warm rooms and water supplies, including a renovated K–8 school in West Seattle, a community center for the Skokomish Indian Tribe, a youth theater in Bellevue and Microsoft’s corporate campus kitchen in Redmond.
Idaho Power said it plans to install 120 MW of battery storage, the state’s first utility-scale storage system, by next summer. The storage facility will help the company maintain reliable service during high use periods while furthering the company’s goal of providing 100 percent clean energy by 2045. Last month, the company filed a request for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.
