October 27
Utilities, Regulators Mostly Embrace Energy Transition
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Itron this week released its 2023 Resourcefulness Insight Report that explores the implications of the energy transition – the shift away from a reliance on fossil fuels and the associated influx of distributed energy resources. The report summarizes key findings from 250 U.S. utility executives and 10 state public utility commissioners on topics relating to the energy transition.
Smart home devices like smart thermostats, smart plugs and many more have grown in popularity and affordability over the past decade. It is expected that by 2025, such devices will be in approximately 60 percent of homes. These devices have already made their way into some utility energy programs, but there is an opportunity to expand the smart home market into underserved populations who can benefit most from these devices.
Snohomish County PUD will be awarded $30 million to improve system reliability, mitigate wildfire risks and enable demand management as part of a historic $10.5 billion investment via the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program. The SnoSMART project is a $60 million infrastructure and software project that will deploy hundreds of wireless-connected smart grid devices to the PUD’s distribution grid and upgrade the software tools to operate them.
Xcel Energy is seeking about 1,200 MW of new wind projects located in southwest Minnesota, the utility announced last Thursday. The renewable resources will help to replace the Sherco coal-fired plant in Becker, Minnesota, which Xcel plans to retire by 2030. The request for proposals is “one of Minnesota’s largest-ever calls for clean energy projects,” the utility said.
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Industry News
The transformation of U.S. transportation to electric vehicles requires a massive deployment of fast chargers that is being slowed by a debate over whether utilities should own and operate charging facilities, analysts on both sides of the debate agree. To grow today’s estimated 10 percent of new light-duty, zero-emission vehicle sales to the national 2030 target of 50 percent will require a change “unprecedented in the history of the automotive industry,” a recent NREL report noted.
New York State made the largest state investment in renewable energy in U.S. history this week, awarding contracts for three offshore wind and 22 land-based renewable energy projects totaling 6.4 gigawatts. The projects, when in operation, will generate enough energy to power 2.6 million New York homes and produce approximately 19 million megawatt-hours of new renewable energy per year.
Eversource is ready to install smart meters for its more than 1.2 million residential and small business customers in Connecticut. The proposal, which was filed in November 2021, forms part of Eversource’s electricity system modernization and is intended to replace mostly end-of-life meters – most of them AMR drive-by read meters, which were installed in the early 2000s – with smart meters.
Roughly 50 million miles of new or replacement power lines must be installed by 2040 if governments around the world are going to reach their climate and clean energy commitments, according to a report released last week by the International Energy Agency. Without sufficient grid investment and regulatory support for clean energy solutions, “grids risk becoming the weak link of clean energy transitions,” IEA warns.
