November 8
CPS Energy Program Recognized by ACEEE
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
A CPS Energy program was recognized by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) as an outstanding utility-funded energy efficiency program. The 2024 Leaders of the Pack awards included a Residential Weatherization (buildings with one to four units) category, and the winner in this category was CPS Energy’s Casa Verde Program, which uses census tract data to serve the most burdened households with insulation, air sealing and LED lights.
Uplight has launched its new and improved Business Customer Engagement solution, which provides business customers with personalized energy insights and recommendations that drive engagement and program participation. The business customer segment represents up to two-thirds of the typical utility’s energy load; to meet decarbonization goals, close partnership with this segment is essential.
New York City utility Con Edison will need to be able to charge about 10,000 electric school buses on its constrained power grid within the next 10 years or so. A $9 million pilot project in Brooklyn could help it figure out how to do that. The project is starting small. Four battery-electric school buses are onsite today, with 12 more expected by the start of the next school year.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) approved PSE&G’s Clean Energy Future – Energy Efficiency II Program (CEF-EE II). This next phase of the program, which spans from January 2025 to June 2027, will fund 10 programs aimed at helping residential and business customers reduce their energy usage, bills and carbon footprint.
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Industry News
Texas installed more solar capacity than any other state in 2023. But more solar panels do not necessarily make for a clean grid; natural gas and coal still account for 57 percent of Texas’ electric supply. So which states get the largest shares of electricity from utility-scale solar?
In an effort to improve reliability for its Massachusetts customers, Eversource will begin transitioning homes and business across the Commonwealth to smart meters in 2025. Eversource is still using AMR and rolling out trucks to read 1.5 million electric meters every day across the Northeast. Itron will supply its Gen 5 meters, and Grid One Solutions will perform the installation.
DTE Energy’s largest solar park, the 150-megawatt Sauk Solar Park located in Branch County, Michigan, is now operational. The solar park has nearly 347,000 solar panels and is more than three times the size of DTE’s second largest solar park in Lapeer. Sauk Solar is the first of six new DTE solar parks that are planned to come online. Sauk Solar, as well as the others, are funded by customers who are voluntarily enrolled in the company’s CleanVision MIGreenPower program.
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for renewable energy technologies is dropping globally, led by wind and solar energy, according to new reports from Wood Mackenzie. In North America, “renewable technologies LCOE declined by 4.6 percent in 2024, underpinned by a 4.2-percent drop in capital costs,” WoodMac said in a release.
