November 20
Mississippi Power to Build Smart Neighborhood
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Mississippi Power and Southern Company recently announced a partnership to build the first smart neighborhood in the world exclusively featuring the Tesla Solar Roof in Lauderdale County. Enzor Place homes will also feature Powerwall batteries, energy-efficient equipment and appliances, and smart home automation. “Mississippi Power uses the most advanced technologies to offer creative energy solutions that make our customers’ lives easier every day,” said Anthony Wilson, Mississippi Power’s President and CEO.
Sunrun announced that it has contracted with Southern California Edison (SCE) in a deal that it says will increase grid resilience and lower power costs. SCE will send signals to Sunrun during high-demand events, such as extreme heat waves when the energy grid is strained. In response, Sunrun will dispatch energy from thousands of its Brightbox solar-powered battery systems installed in the SCE territory, providing five MW of energy capacity to help support the overall energy system.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is launching a new initiative to expand the region’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The Tennessee Valley is emerging as a key player in the development of electric vehicles. TVA and its public power partners are in a prime position to enable the broader adoption of electric vehicles. “TVA is an industry leader in delivering low-cost, clean energy, and we intend to take a leadership role in electric vehicle transportation,” Jeff Lyash, said TVA’s President and CEO.
This week, the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) released a new report that sheds light on lower-income consumers’ behaviors, attitudes and values on energy efficiency, smart home technology, renewable energy, their electricity providers and climate change. The Understanding Lower-Income Consumers and the Smart Energy Future report was developed from an online national survey administered to 1,000 consumers across the U.S. in August and September 2020.
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Industry News
Overall business customer satisfaction with electric utilities has climbed this year, aided by record-high reliability scores, but serious gaps in satisfaction exist between small and large businesses. According to the recently released 2020 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study, satisfaction among large businesses has increased eight points (on a 1000-point scale) during the pandemic but has declined 11 points among small businesses during the same period.
Portland General Electric (PGE) announced this week that it intends to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with customers’ power by 80 percent by 2030. “Our future depends on taking immediate action to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Maria Pope, President and CEO, PGE. “Today, we placed a new milestone: aiming to achieve companywide net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.”
After years of selling more expensive home battery systems, sonnen launched a new product to compete on cost with other options in the U.S. residential storage market. The Germany-based company, acquired by oil major Shell in 2019, designed its sonnenCore system to deliver daily cycling for grid services as well as backup power. It comes with a capacity of 5 kilowatts/10 kilowatt-hours and a price point of $9,500. That puts it in competition with the similarly sized LG Chem Resu and Enphase Encharge batteries.
With the phaseout of the full value of the U.S. production tax credit looming, developers are rushing to cash in on wind turbine generation, causing a surge of new capacity the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts could reach 23 GW by year’s end. The previous record was 13.2 GW, set in 2012 – another year marked by tax credit reductions. This year’s prediction comes even though only 5 GW of capacity has been added in the first eight months of 2020.
