September 27
Consumers Energy to Build Community Solar Array
Top consumer smart energy news hand-selected and brought to you by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative.
Member News
Consumers Energy will start construction next spring on a new 30-acre community solar array in Jackson County, Michigan. The Blackman Solar project will provide local clean energy to customers through its Solar Gardens program. The facility should start generating electricity by the end of 2025. Blackman Solar will include nearly 5,000 solar panels and will generate up to 2.5 MW of renewable electricity for 2,500 future Solar Gardens customers.
As another wildfire season passes, many utilities, mostly in the West, are thinking about their mitigation strategy for next year and beyond. In Washington, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is undertaking a pilot program to evaluate the performance of the Gridscope, a solar-powered sensor from Gridware mounted on utility poles for wildfire mitigation, fault detection and reliability improvements.
Origis Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority announced a power purchase agreement to expand their solar and storage portfolio in Mississippi. Origis would develop, construct and operate Hope Solar + Storage, a 200 MWac Solar + 200 MW (800 MWh) storage facility, in Clay County, Mississippi, and sell the power to TVA to help fuel some of the fastest growth in the nation – both in terms of population and economic development.
Virtual Peaker, a leading cloud-based grid-edge technology company dedicated to advancing the future of energy and supporting global decarbonization goals, announced a strategic partnership with FranklinWH, a pioneer in home energy management and battery solutions. This collaboration allows utilities to support household consumption intelligently and decrease peak load on the grid.
Get Your Weekly Edition
Industry News
The U.S. electric car market is clearly growing. Sales are rising, market penetration is increasing, and we’re getting closer to the dream of emissions-free motoring. But the road is not without its potholes and speed bumps: Several major automakers, such as Ford and Volvo, have in recent months pulled back on their EV goals, citing a trickier-than-expected U.S. market. The brands within Hyundai Motor Group tell a different story, however.
The city of Seattle announced last week that it’s offering a new $4,000 rebate for moderate-income households to replace their oil heating systems with electric heat pumps. The rebate means income-qualified residents can access a total of up to $8,000 in support for transitioning to heat pumps, by stacking the new rebate with the city’s existing, non-income-restricted $2,000 instant rebate and a $2,000 federal tax credit.
It’s back-to-school season in the U.S., and more students than ever are headed to class on electric, emissions-free, battery-powered buses. Here are the states where EV school buses are truly on a roll, per a new PIRG analysis of World Resources Institute (WRI) data. Electric school buses are a crucial tool for cleaning up transportation, the single largest source of carbon pollution in the country.
Dominion Energy Virginia plans to launch the Residential Charger Program, a new turnkey solution for customers interested in a Level 2 home charging system for their electric vehicle (EV). According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are currently almost 80,000 EVs on the road in Virginia. Dominion Energy said that because that number is growing rapidly, the company has many resources in place to support EV drivers.
