ComEd has filed with Illinois regulators a proposed four-year TOU pilot program, seeking to compare its current real-time offering to one that gives customers a better sense of the cost of their energy supply. The utility has offered its Real-Time Pricing Program for a decade, but has heard from customers that the lack of price certainty is a barrier to signing up.

Paula Gold-Williams, President and CEO of CPS Energy, recently detailed how CPS Energy has become an “enabler” of San Antonio as a smart city and argued that rather than focus on the definition of what a smart city is, it is more important to start placing solutions in the hands of customers. In an interview with the APPA, Gold-Williams also detailed how CPS Energy has worked hard to improve customer service in recent years and is exploring additional opportunities to build on that success.

Bidgely yesterday introduced the new Bidgely Insights Engine that extends the value of its artificial intelligence platform to a range of internal utility functions. The Bidgely Insights Engine analyzes meter data from both smart and monthly read meters, plus a variety of third-party data including weather, demographics and building data, to identify and segment customers by appliance-level ownership, usage and efficiency.

As temperatures drop and winter looms, homeowners and property managers are sweeping chimneys, insulating pipes and swapping screens for storm windows. They're also going beyond traditional winterizing by installing smart thermostats and home energy monitors aiming to lower utility bills. Smart thermostats are among the most popular smart home technologies, generating $1.3 billion in sales globally in 2017, according to Navigant Research.

NYPA took a meaningful step toward combating electric vehicle range anxiety in its home state this week, with the identification of 32 new public charging locations along major traffic routes. NYPA announced recently that it has reached an agreement with the New York State Thruway to site fast chargers at 15 service areas along the corridor. Chargers will be conveniently located at service areas no more than 75 miles apart in order to support long-distance travel.

Whatever your take on environmental policy and climate change, energy efficiency has generally been neutral territory. So in a world where many are searching for common ground, why is efficiency losing out? According to a new International Energy Agency report, improvements in efficiency by 2040 could allow the world to double the value of the energy it uses today.