September 14
Is the Clean Energy Economy Overlooking SMBs?
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
“Mind the Gap.” Whether you’ve visited London or not, you’re most likely familiar with the London Underground’s famous catchphrase. However, that well-known phrase may have implications related to clean energy based on a recent analysis. While Google, Apple, Facebook and other large corporations have lately garnered considerable attention for their commitments to renewable energy, electric utilities and companies like Nest, Tesla and Vivint Solar have also focused on providing innovative programs and technologies to residential energy customers.
Martha Bawn from Tendril recently had the opportunity to attend ACEEE’s 20th biennial Summer Study – an event that attracted a lively and eclectic group of industry influencers from utility folks and evaluators to researchers, policymakers and press. During the conference, she presented insights from a joint white paper she co-authored with their partners at ILLUME Advising.
Pepco last week unveiled a $15 million transportation program aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of the city's drivers and making charging infrastructure available to all residents. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has made the growth of electrified transportation options a priority for the city, noting that the transportation sector contributes more than 20 percent of the District's carbon emissions.
DNV GL expects global grid capacity to triple by 2050 as electricity network operators fight to cope with a surge in electric vehicles and renewables. The quality assurance and risk management giant said the electrification of energy demand would double by 2050 as transportation, buildings and manufacturing all increasingly go electric. Installation rates for distribution system transformers will double.
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Industry News
Utilities are – and have been for a long time – seeking better ways through which they can engage with their customers. According to Jeff Hamel, the Nest smart thermostat, which is part of the hardware product line that Google provides, is a good example of a simple way that utilities are partnering with their customers.
Bolstered by a surge in the residential sector, the energy storage deployments in the United States have grown 200 percent over the year, and have made for a record-setting second quarter. Home energy storage deployment surpassed that of front-of-meter storage for the first time in a single quarter. Residential deployment grew tenfold, helping overall energy storage reach 156.5-megawatt hours deployed, reflecting triple the amount that was implemented in the second quarter of 2017.
Annual shipments of smart electricity meters exceeded 100 million units for the first time in 2017, whilst total meter shipments reached 170 million. With almost $5 billion generated annually by meter manufacturers just for hardware and increasing sales of related software and services, the AMI technology wave is set to continue even as some major rollouts begin to peak in the coming years.
We are at the dawn of an exciting new day for offshore wind in the United States. For far too long, offshore wind was a promising concept rather than an actual industry in this country. But today, states up and down the east coast and private industry are making substantial commitments to this new, clean energy resource – and for good reason.
