October 25
ComEd to Test TOU Rates Starting in 2020
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Chicago-area residents who can hold off on running dishwashers, washing machines and other energy-intensive appliances until later in the evening will have a chance to save money on their electric bills starting next summer. The Illinois Commerce Commission recently approved a time-of-use pilot program first proposed just under a year ago by ComEd, the state’s largest electric utility, which serves Chicago and the rest of northern Illinois. It’s expected to begin in June 2020 and last four years. Any ComEd residential customer with a smart meter is eligible to participate, but enrollment will be capped at 1,900 participants.
Ameren Missouri recently announced that it received approval from the Missouri Public Service Commission for a program through which the company will bring more electric vehicle charging stations to its service territory. The program is a component of the company’s $11 million Ameren Missouri Charge Ahead program, which aims to encourage the adoption of EVs. As a result of the approval, starting early next year, business owners can apply for incentives to offset the construction costs associated with electric vehicle charging stations.
These days, everything is smart. Smart phones. Smart watches. Smart speakers. Smart meters. It’s Lake Wobegon... gone smarter! Smart is in. Dumb is (so) out. Speaking of, utilities have jumped on the smart train too. Enter the smart meter. In short, smart meters are modern devices that record our energy usage at shorter intervals (15, 30 or 60 minutes) and then wirelessly transmit this data back to utilities. End result? Users can see a more detailed snapshot of when and how much energy they use from hour to hour, day to day.
Utility companies must begin to seriously plan and implement energy supplies for electric vehicles or other companies may provide the power for such cars and trucks. That’s just one of the key points directed toward utilities in the just-released report Preparing for an Electric Vehicle Future: How Utilities Can Succeed. The 40-page report by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) is a guide for utilities that want to ramp up for EV use. It also details how electric utilities can prepare for challenges, gain customer buy-in and minimize costs.
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Why can’t you get an accurate, fact-based online quote for a rooftop solar system, backup battery or electric vehicle charger as easily as getting a quote on, say, a mortgage refinancing or home insurance policy? Devin Hampton, CEO of UtilityAPI, wants to make this vision a reality. His company has built a technology platform to manage the open, transparent and secure exchange of energy data, and this week the California-based based startup announced a pilot project with Silicon Valley Clean Energy to test it out.
As the adoption of plug-in vehicles and other electrified transportation accelerates, the revolution is being hosted and facilitated by cities and towns of varying sizes. In concert with local utilities, they are rolling out policies and projects and replacing aging fleets, while working to enable the shift among residents and businesses. “Most cities are in the early stages of electrification,” Lang Reynolds, Duke Energy's Director of Electrification Strategy, told Utility Dive. Transportation is the largest driver of emissions and urban air quality, so cities see electrification as “one of their biggest opportunities.”
New York’s utility regulator approved construction for a 316-megawatt battery storage plant that would replace fossil fueled capacity in New York City. The Ravenswood project, if built, will be the largest battery plant in the state, providing emissions free power to the New York City region during the hours of greatest demand. It also marks the first major use of energy storage for peaking power in the Northeast. California and Arizona have tapped energy storage for this role, but East Coast batteries have been smaller and generally geared toward fast-response grid services.
Michigan’s Consumers Energy and Sunverge announced their collaboration to leverage Sunverge’s real-time control, aggregation and orchestration platform and the company’s energy storage technology for a residential battery storage pilot. Sunverge worked with Consumers Energy to evaluate the energy provider’s distribution circuits and identify grid locations suitable to test the potential benefits and value from behind the meter battery storage. Consumers Energy used this analysis to select a circuit in Michigan’s Grand Rapids area to conduct the pilot.
