September 22
Duke to Build First Its Utility-Scale Regulated Battery Storage Projects
Top consumer smart grid news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
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Duke Energy is investing $30 million to install two battery storage systems in North Carolina in what the company says are the first large-scale energy storage projects built by its regulated utility business. Duke plans to install a 9 MW lithium-ion battery system at a Duke substation in the Rock Hill community near Sweeten Creek Road in Asheville.
The long rivalry between Itron and Silver Spring Networks, the country’s two major smart meter and grid networking players, is ending in marriage. On Monday, Itron announced plans to acquire all outstanding shares of Silver Spring for $16.25 per share in cash, a premium of 25 percent from Friday’s close, in a transaction valued at $830 million, excluding $180 million in Silver Spring cash.
ComEd and the Illinois Institute of Technology have partnered to develop two microgrids, with help from U.S. Department of Energy grants, that will test new technologies and better understand how to keep power flowing in adverse weather events. Over the summer, ComEd proposed a microgrid for Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, which would then connect to an existing microgrid on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus.
As utilities look to their future, they should consider not only a new decentralized power system architecture and changing business models but also their future customers. And this group is increasingly consisting of the "next generation" of energy customers – the millennials, or Generation Y, who were born during the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, in the United States in 2016, millennials overtook baby boomers – those born in the late 1940s and 1950s – as the largest generation in terms of population.
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Industry News
Potential solar customers are certainly window shopping. But in today’s market, interest doesn’t always equate to sales. The latest Solar Marketplace Intel report from EnergySage shows increasing interest in solar from consumers. But the current array of options aren’t always enough to convince shoppers to buy -- especially for community solar.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced recently a comprehensive state energy storage roadmap – 1,500 MW by 2025, as a first step toward a larger goal by 2030. The roadmap's recommendations range from using the previously announced $200 million investment from the NY Green Bank for strategic storage-related projects, along with changes to wholesale market rules, regulatory changes to utility rates and more.
Utility customer satisfaction has reached a record high according to new research. The research shows that electric and natural gas utilities post an all-time high score of 767 (on a 1,000-point maximum scale). However, there is a huge 138-point difference between the highest- and lowest-scoring utilities, because the best utilities have created experiences with customer ease and convenience in mind.
The installed cost of solar power fell to record lows in the first quarter of 2017 because of the continuing decline in photovoltaic module and inverter prices, higher module efficiency and lower labor costs, according to an analysis by DOE’s NREL. Utility-scale solar costs fell nearly 30 percent from a year ago while residential- and commercial-scale solar prices dropped by 6 percent and 15 percent, respectively. The declining costs leads to a corresponding cut in the levelized cost of electricity from the systems.
