October 6
Xcel Energy Plans 300 MW South Dakota Wind Farm
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Xcel Energy plans to build and own a new 300 MW wind farm in South Dakota, adding to the company’s wind power expansion strategy. This project puts Xcel Energy on pace to be the first utility in the nation to surpass 10,000 megawatts of wind on its system, which would be more than enough clean energy to power every home in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The Illinois Corporation Commission recently adopted a new metric for judging the impact of smart grid upgrades and advanced metering rollouts, by tracking emissions reductions across Ameren's territory in central and southern Illinois. The metric was proposed by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Citizens Utility Board (CUB), after being developed with Commonwealth Edison in the northern part of the state. ComEd began using the tool last year.
A super majority of respondents nationwide think smart city technologies will have a positive impact on their lives, while half of those are expecting it to happen in the next three years or sooner, according to a new study by Silver Spring Networks Inc. and advocacy group Power Over Energy.
I had the following interesting discussion regarding analytics trends with Raiford Smith, VP of Energy Technology and Analytics at Entergy. Raiford brings more than 26 years of industry experience with strategies and innovations related to supply- and demand-side analytics, and has been involved in partnerships with other utilities and OEMs to create new technology, develop new markets and lead international partnerships.
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Industry News
This year’s renewable energy report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) confirms what many watching the industry already know: clean energy prices have taken a nosedive, upping competition and uptake of new technologies. Clean energy will grow by about 1,000 gigawatts in the next five years, according to IEA’s projection.
Tesla has promised to send hundreds of battery storage packs to help Puerto Rico, which is almost entirely without power after Hurricane Maria devastated the island two weeks ago, Bloomberg reports. Only about five percent of the grid is currently operating, The New York Times reports, and local government officials said it could be as long as six months before power is restored to the island's 3.5 million residents.
General Motors is going all in on electric vehicles. Eventually. The American automaker announced yesterday that it's transitioning to a "zero emissions future," starting with the launch of two new all-electric vehicles in the next 18 months. These vehicles, based off of lessons learned from the Chevrolet Bolt EV, will be the first of at least 20 new all-electric vehicles GM will launch by 2023.
The concept of the power grid as a “platform” — a hub that coordinates energy transactions between various producers and consumers rather than a one-way delivery system — is central to the way Illinois is building a blueprint for its grid of the future. An extensive, statewide study of this future kicked off last week when hundreds of company representatives, regulators, academics and other industry insiders convened in Chicago to mark the start of NextGrid, an 18-month “consumer-focused collaborative study to transform Illinois’ energy landscape and economy.”
