November 10
Ameren Highlights EV Investments, Voltage Optimization
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
While companies around the world commit to reducing carbon in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, electric utilities are one of three key sectors to watch. Ameren Corporation, with operations in both Illinois and Missouri, highlighted in a new report — Committed to Clean: Transformational Changes Toward Net-Zero — how it foresees modernizing and building out its T&D infrastructure to reduce carbon and support a decarbonized transportation sector.
SMUD and the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), Japan’s largest electric utility, announced an agreement to collaborate on vehicle-grid integration technologies with the purpose of accelerating transportation electrification and decarbonization. The MOU establishes a framework for shared research and collaboration on how to expand and support EV adoption and vehicle-to-everything technology while maintaining a resilient and reliable power grid.
We’ve written often about the regulatory requirements that drive decarbonization efforts, and how this is compounded by electrification initiatives, prosumer-driven distributed energy resource (DER) and electric vehicle adoption that continues to challenge the grid. Ultimately, these phenomena create two parallel objectives: to keep the lights on and the grid strong in the short term and mitigate climate change and our global quality of life in the long run.
Students at five area public high schools will get behind the wheel of an EV in driver education class thanks to a $250,000 investment ComEd announced this week with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and educators from across the region. The ComEd EVs for Education program, which provides schools funding to offset the cost of an EV and EV charger, will give students first-hand experience driving EVs.
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Industry News
A motley crew of companies is banding together to help inform the public on how families can save money and fight climate change by electrifying their homes and cars. Last week, the White House announced that seven companies are joining with Rewiring America in a collaborative effort to educate their customers on the rebates, tax credits and low-cost financing available under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Sunrun has been selected by Puerto Rico’s electric utility provider to develop a 17-megawatt virtual power plant (VPP), the first distributed large-scale storage program on the island. The Governing Board of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, a public power utility, approved the terms of the agreement on October 26, 2022. The agreement is subject to regulatory sign-off by the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau and the Fiscal Oversight Management Board.
Amazon’s Rivian-produced electric vans will deliver holiday packages in more than 100 U.S. cities this year, the company said Monday. The EV fleet began making deliveries this summer in more than a dozen cities, and it has since expanded to additional locations, according to a post on Amazon’s website. New cities where customers will encounter the vans include Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, New York, Oakland and Pittsburgh.
Last week, Hawaii approved a set of innovative, responsive utility rates to help the state power itself entirely with renewable electricity. The Aloha State leads the nation in the rate of rooftop solar adoption, and it is shutting down fossil-fueled plants and building large solar and battery facilities in their place. Utility Hawaiian Electric, which supplies all the islands besides Kauai, must ensure there’s enough electricity to keep the lights on after the sun sets on an increasingly solar-dominated grid.
