November 22
Xcel Energy’s First Large-Scale Solar Facility Up and Running
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Xcel Energy said Tuesday it is now delivering carbon-free electricity from its Sherco Solar site in central Minnesota, one of the country’s largest solar projects in the Upper Midwest. Sherco Solar’s initial connection to the Upper Midwest grid occurred in late October, serving customers across the region with more than 220 MW of solar power. Two additional connection phases will come online in 2025 and 2026.
Salt River Project and Flatland Storage LLC have entered into an agreement to provide 200 MW of new energy storage to Arizona’s grid. The Flatland Energy Storage Project will be a 200 MW/800 MWh battery energy storage system located near Coolidge, Arizona. The project will utilize lithium-ion technology, designed and manufactured in the U.S. by Tesla, and is scheduled to be online in 2025.
PA Consulting recently announced that Con Edison is the winner of its 2024 National ReliabilityOne® Award for providing the most reliable electric service in the nation. PA Consulting also selected Con Edison for Outstanding Reliability Performance in the Northeast Region Metropolitan Service Area. PA Consulting makes the selections after in-depth analysis of reliability and outage information for electric providers across the United States.
Year-round grid-strengthening work and the use of advanced technology by Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, helped reduce power outages and enable swifter restorations during hurricanes Helene and Milton. The company’s self-healing technology, for instance, prevented more than 300,000 customer outages during those hurricanes, saving customers more than 300 million minutes of total outage time.
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Industry News
Cleaning up the grid will require installing a lot of batteries to store renewable energy. Startup Element Energy has delivered a powerful proof point for a new way to do that more cheaply without sacrificing safety. Element has been operating what appears to be the largest grid storage plant in the world composed of previously used electric vehicle batteries.
A new J.D. Power report indicates a significant rise in satisfaction among U.S. business customers of electric utilities. After several years of declines, overall satisfaction has increased by 30 points on a 1,000-point scale, reaching 784 in 2024. This improvement is driven by proactive efforts from utility providers to help business customers manage costs, improve communication, and foster a sense of corporate responsibility.
A single, resounding message emerged from PG&E’s Innovation Summit last week: AI’s ability to address grid challenges in a scalable, affordable way is too big to ignore. Two weeks after releasing its R&D strategy report, which for the first time elaborated its vision to become an “AI-enabled utility,” PG&E’s embrace of AI was on full display at the event.
National Grid is launching a two-year initiative to deploy smart meters across Western New York. Starting in January, approximately 4,100 customers in this region will receive new smart meters, providing customers with additional control and near real-time insights about their energy use. This follows the successful deployment of more than 450,000 electric meters in central and eastern New York.
